


The Edge of Time

by queer_cheer



Series: The Adventures of River Song [4]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio), The Diary of River Song (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Action, Adventure, Alternate Timelines, Daleks - Freeform, Family, Father-Daughter Relationship, Guilt, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Lots and lots of Time Travel, Mind Control, Mystery, Nightmares, Sometimes unreliable narrator, Telepathy, Temporary Character Death, Time Travel, but fear not jack and river are not a couple just good friends, dalek politics, doctor-lite story, father-daughter bonding, it's river's show hell yeah, references to the lives of captain jack: r+j, which is basically fascism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:20:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 76,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24474184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queer_cheer/pseuds/queer_cheer
Summary: Using a vortex manipulator to transport into a TARDIS, also traveling through the vortex, was a bit like hitting a bullet with a smaller bullet, if both bullets were traveling ten times the speed of light and you couldn’t see your gun. Piece of cake, thought River. If the cake was poisoned and filled with acid or maggots or lava or something. It was all about perspective.With the Doctor stranded in a bubble universe on the edge of time, the Watcher has bitten off more than he can chew: reality has collapsed, and from the rubble emerged a new history — one in which the Daleks won the Time War and have conquered half the universe. But River Song is on the case, along with an unlikely group of temporal anomalies who have memories of the old world, and together, they have to save the Doctor and set reality back on track before it's too late — before everything and everyone they've ever known is gone forever.*This is the final bit of the Adventure of River Song series, and it might not make the most sense unless you've read at least the epilogues of the prior three fics in the series!*
Relationships: Amy Pond/Rory Williams, Eleventh Doctor/River Song, implied past Jack Harkness/River Song, slight notes of Thasmin
Series: The Adventures of River Song [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1582024
Comments: 112
Kudos: 80





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> HAPPY RIVER SONG APPRECIATION DAY!!! And welcome to the "series finale" of the Adventures of River Song haha. This one picks up basically right where Watertown's epilogue left off, so like I said in the summary, it might be a little confusing if you haven't read the others. But nonetheless, I hope you all enjoy, and I hope you're all healthy and safe in this mad world x

River Song had a plan. 

Well, she had an idea. It wasn’t quite actionable enough to be called a plan, and it was almost more of a shot in the dark than an idea at all, but it was something, and the alternative was nothing, and nothing was a one-way ticket to wherever people went when the whole universe fell out from beneath their feet. 

She had to act fast. Riding on the success of her plan-slash-idea-slash-shot-in-the-dark was the fate of everything that ever was — and, worse yet, the fate of the Doctor. Her Doctor.

“Alright, Professor,” she muttered to herself. “What have we got? Vortex manipulator? Check. Broken, a bit finicky, a little out of juice, but it’ll get the job done!” She paused, frowning. “I hope. No, no, no need for hope when you’re clever. Hope is a last resort. We aren’t there yet.” 

From the floor of her cell in Stormcage, she gathered up a smattering of things she thought might come in handy — her diary, a knife, a tube of amnesiac lipstick, and a vial of toxic nail polish (fire-engine red). She tucked them all into the pockets of her jumpsuit and fastened the sparking kit to her wrist with the slightest, most hesitant wince.

Using a vortex manipulator to transport into a TARDIS, also traveling through the vortex, was a bit like hitting a bullet with a smaller bullet, if both bullets were traveling ten times the speed of light and you couldn’t see your gun. Piece of cake, thought River. If the cake was poisoned and filled with acid or maggots or lava or something. It was all about perspective. 

There was a chance it would kill her. Rather, it would _probably_ kill her, and there was only a _chance_ that it wouldn’t. But she’d rather die, she realised, than live with the knowledge of what she’d lost, what she’d done — and the knowledge that she’d done nothing to make it right. If she was going to die, she was going to die trying. 

She’d entered the world on the tail-end of a prophecy spewed from the mouth of a fanatic; she would be the woman who kills the Doctor. She’d spent the rest of her life fighting to subvert the universe’s bitter expectations of her, and she was doing rather well — right up until the Watcher came along. And then there she was once again, on track to be the girl who ruins everything. Well, not on her watch.

Maybe it was time for hope after all. 

“Coordinates punched in,” she muttered. The storm outside was picking up. The electric interference of the lightning wasn’t doing her any favours. If she was spiritual — she’d been a soldier of sorts far too long to believe there was a God watching over her — this was the point at which she’d try and make peace with some higher power. But she’d never been good at making peace with anyone, and there was no higher power in her universe than the Doctor. 

Not many people had the chance to pick their last words this carefully, though, and she figured that was kind of a silver lining, and so she let out a breath and she started to think.

“I don’t love many things. In fact, I love very few things,” she said to no one in particular, fiddling with the manipulator, making final adjustments, wondering vaguely if a guard down the corridor was listening to her and writing up a request for another psych evaluation with record speed. “But you’ve taken the one thing I do adore from me, Watcher, and I’m going to find you, and I’m going to burn you for it. Or I’m going to die, too,” she laughed mirthlessly. “But I’ll die with the satisfaction that you didn’t get to kill me. So either way, checkmate!” 

She hit the button. All of reality seemed to rush at her at once, and then it turned on its heels and rushed away with the speed of light, and she was falling.

*HALF AN HOUR EARLIER*

“The Doctor kills people,” the Watcher snarled. “Has he told you about his children? How he murdered them — along with the rest of Gallifrey — in the Time War?”

“Liar,” River accused. “They died when they were small, long before the war.”

“For Time Lords, there is no before and after,” the Watcher told her coldly. “He destroyed the planet, wiped it from time. His children weren’t killed in a bombing, no, that’s just what he tells people. What he tells himself. They were wiped from reality before they were ever even born.”

“You’re lying!”

“Am I?” he stroked her cheek. “Among the people he killed were my own children. My wife. A billion other peoples’ children and wives. Don’t you think he has to pay for playing god?”

He had to do it, River meant to say. It was unavoidable. It was necessary. She believed that, up until the exact moment she felt the Watcher force her to nod.

“Easy now, love. You’re getting all worked up. One last question. A very, very important question.” He paused, prodding around in River’s mind and settling the parts of it that had started to churn. She was hypnotised under his touch, taken away from herself, out of her own mind, out of her own body. He was a gifted telepath, yes, and she was the killer with a mind that had been broken once before. Part of her knew she never stood a chance against his influence. “What is the Doctor’s name? I know you know. Most Time Lords don’t even know. What's so special about you, hm?”

River winced as he tightened his grip on her throat once again.

"Nothing special at all," she managed.

"Maybe not to me. Maybe not to the rest of the universe. But to the Doctor?" He laughed. "Oh, to the Doctor, you're somebody. Not anybody. Not just anybody. Not just anything. How cross do you think he'll be when he learns that you've betrayed him?"

No, River thought. It was the oldest and most deadly question in the universe: Doctor Who? She wouldn't tell him. She couldn't.

Except she could. And she would. She didn't have a choice.

She felt her mouth moving, though she tried to keep it shut. She felt herself telling him everything at the very same time she was biting her lip until she tasted blood to keep herself quiet. There was one of her in her cell, and one of her in the Watcher’s mind, and that transcendental version, whose own mind had been cracked wide open, spoke aloud the name of the Doctor. The true name. The deadly name. The name from capital-B Before. It was a secret password to tombs around the universe, a temporal key to unlocking things that ought to remain forever shut. And she’d just given the Watcher the lockpick he needed to break-and-enter into a string of closed realities, releasing more horrors upon the universe than she could ever even begin to count.

When she opened her eyes, she was laying on her bed in her cell, drenched in a cold sweat. The rain had picked up outside her window, and a flash of lightning cast a quick ivory glow that reached out into the empty corridor. She swore she heard the fading horror of the Watcher’s sick laugh fade with the distant thunder.

Oh no. Oh no, oh no, no, no.

She leapt to her feet with a startled gasp and began to pace, flexing her fingers and cracking her knuckles, just to remind herself that she could move again. There’s nothing worse than being frozen, being helpless, being unable to control your own body and mind. She’d felt that way once before, when she was strapped into a spacesuit under Lake Silencio, under exactly 3,913,010,672,301 gallons of water — and each gallon weighed 8.33 pounds. She did the math in her head every time she needed something to distract her: The weight of the world was, it seemed, 3.2595379e+13 pounds. She loved maths. She was good at maths. She was clever.

But it didn’t matter how clever she was. Like the suit under the lake, the Watcher had moved for her, and thought for her, and acted for her. She felt nauseous at the thought. Violated. Claustrophobic. Her cell suddenly felt much too small, her skin too tight, her clothes restrictive. She unzipped the collar of her jumpsuit and leaned her head against the cool wall. Oh, she felt terrible.

There was nothing worse.

Well, there was one thing worse, and it was telling a strange and seemingly sociopathic renegade the most dangerous secret in the universe.

Oh, no.

She punched the wall and let out a frustrated shout, knocking the contents of her bed to the floor and flinging the abandoned tray of rotten food hard against the bars.

Winded, she paused to stare into the grimy, cracked mirror plastered below the window. She stared at herself, into her own wide eyes, examining the expression on her face and doing her best to make sure it matched what she actually felt. Fear? Panic? Guilt? Yes, that seemed right. She was herself again, alone in her mind, uninfluenced and free from the Watcher’s hypnotic conditioning. But she’d already caused the damage. It was too late. She hadn’t been strong enough.

“Oh, Professor,” she whispered, pressing her hand against the glass and touching the tears on her reflection’s cheek. “What have you done?”

Behind her, she heard the familiar groan of a TARDIS trying to dock with its brakes on. Instinctively, she pressed her back to the wall and stared into the distortions around the empty space in the corridor, hearts racing. 

No, not now! Not here. Not yet! She hadn’t had time to fix things! She reached under her mattress and withdrew a vortex manipulator, buckling it to her wrist, but before she had the chance to come up with any sort of plan, the Doctor was standing at the bars of her cell, his boyish smile as crooked as his bowtie.

“Hello, Professor Song, are you ready for another adventure?” he flirted, pointing the sonic at her cell door and stepping inside once all the locks and levers had lifted. “I’ve got some new dresses in the wardrobe, but where we’re going, I don’t reckon you’d be wearing any of them for long.”

“Doctor…” 

“Unless, of course, that was too forward,” he recoiled, thumping himself on the forehead. “Some things just sound better in your head, don’t they!” 

“Doctor, I—” 

“Oi, I rehearsed that line all the way from Gamma IV, the lads there told me I ought to try to be more risque, but look at you, you’re horrified! You! Horrified! Blimey, I’ve really lost my—” 

“Dammit, listen to me! Doctor!” River slapped him. Hard. Fast. Swift, with such emotion that she surprised herself. When the Doctor looked up at her, a stunned hand on his stinging cheek, the momentary rage dissipated. Her eyes were saucer-wide and rimmed in red, and she was breathing hard, like a deer caught in the high-beam headlights of a near-miss.

“What’s the matter?” he reached to touch her arm, but she pulled away.

“I’ve got to tell you something,” she said, feeling sick. Her stomach had tied itself into anxious knots, and she found that she couldn’t remember the last time she felt so guilty. Guilt was hardly becoming of a convicted killer. Her threshold was rather high for the very same reason it took so much to frighten her — she was always a little bit afraid, and she was always feeling just the slightest bit guilty, an undercurrent of stress that never really went away. But this was new. This was big.

“What is it?” 

“I’ve done something,” she whispered, voice laced with vibrato. “Something bad. Something that’s going to be very, very hard to fix.” 

Brow knit, the Doctor studied her expression curiously. “I dropped you off here less than eight hours ago, and you’ve been locked inside the most secure prison in the galaxy ever since. How on Earth did you manage to get into trouble?” 

“It’s a skill,” River’s humourless laugh was a bit too loud and blatantly artificial. She quickly sobered. “There was a man. A telepath. A Time Lord telepath man, and—” 

“There are no Time Lords,” the Doctor told her darkly, calmly, slowly.

“You’re wrong,” she whispered. “There’s one more. He must’ve been...I-I don’t know, off-world when Gallifrey was destroyed. Maybe he was in the vortex when you...when it was wiped from time, or maybe he was in a bubble timeline, or maybe he’s just the luckiest bastard in the universe, Doctor, I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter! What matters is that he’s out there! He’s called the Watcher, and he’s out there.” 

“The Watcher!?” 

“Not that one! An admirer of his, an enemy of yours,” River flinched. “He wants you dead, and he’s...he’s got a small militia — the general from Verath, the old industrialist from Bluewood Manor, Pan and Dor from Watertown, a-and weapons, too. Cosmic tripwires, de-mat guns, time guns, teleportation rays, the whole lot of it, I know it sounds mad, but—”

“Slow down, slow down,” the Doctor put a hand on either of her shoulders. “Slow down, and breathe. You mean to tell me there’s another Time Lord out there — an adept telepath — who’s been rounding up the people we tick off across the universe, and who wants to kill me to secure the unique pleasure of being the last of his kind?” 

River bit her lip and nodded. “Told you it sounds mad.” 

“If it was anyone else telling me this, I reckon I wouldn’t believe them at all,” he began to pace. “But you’ve never cried wolf before.” 

“He was in my head,” she mumbled, realising only then how violated she felt. How vulnerable, how used. She bit down hard on her lip. “I told him something. He made me. I didn’t want to tell him, I swear it, I—” 

“What?” the Doctor took hold of River’s hand. “Sweetie, whatever it was, it’s alright. We’ll work through it.” 

She shook her head. “I don’t know that we can.” 

The Doctor’s jaw clenched. “What is it, River?” 

“A secret. The worst secret,” she pulled her hand away to find that it was shaking. Was she frightened of him? No, surely not! He was the Doctor. Her Doctor. Her love. He’d never hurt her. She was frightened that she’d hurt him, instead. That she’d let him down. That she’d betrayed his trust. This was a new feeling, she thought. It wasn’t just guilt. It was worse. It was shame.

“River…” the Doctor, beginning to understand, glanced back over toward his TARDIS. “When you say the worst secret...you don’t mean—”

She nodded, tears prickling in her eyes. As quickly as he could, the Doctor pulled her into a hug, holding her against his chest tightly, firmly, protectively. River was always so fond of saying a hug was only a way to hide your face, and that’s exactly what the Doctor was doing. There was rage in the firm curve of his jaw, and terror in the way his eyes narrowed. River didn’t need to see it to know it was there — her expression was practically identical.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered into his shoulder. “I didn’t want to tell him, Doctor. I—” 

“It’s not your fault,” he pulled away just enough to look her in the eye, tilting her chin up. “If you’ve never believed a word I’ve said before, please believe that, River. I don’t blame you for anything that’s going to happen. You can’t blame yourself, either.” 

River shook her head. “Nothing’s going to happen,” she told him firmly, regaining her composure. “Because we’re going to fix this, aren’t we? We...we can go back and stop him. Maybe stop you from ever telling me, so he could never—” 

“I’m so sorry, River, but it isn’t that simple,” the Doctor tucked a strand of hair back behind her ear. “I’m so sorry you got wrapped up in all this. That he upset you. Hurt you. Because of me. I’m sorry.” 

“Chivalry is dead, Doctor, and I killed it because I don’t want your sympathy,” she hissed. “Stop apologising and tell me how we beat him.” 

“We don’t,” he guided her to sit on her bed, and he sat down beside her. “I’ve put you in enough danger. I love you too much to ask you to fight a Time Lord.” 

“You don’t have to ask me to do anything,” she snatched her hand away from his. “We fight together. We always have done, and we always will. Besides,” she looked down at her lap. “This was my mistake.” 

“He violated your mind, River, and stole information from you. It wasn’t your mistake,” he stood up, cracking his knuckles. “It was his. Where I’m going, you musn’t follow. Do you understand?” 

“Where are you going?” 

The Doctor, silent, only reached out to touch her cheek. River pulled away.

“That’s it, then?” 

“River…”

“Don’t you _River_ me, Doctor.” 

“I don’t want you to get hurt on my account.” 

“I’ve already been hurt on your bloody account!” she shouted. “Kovarian, the Silence, the Church of the Papal Mainframe, Stormcage, for Heaven’s sake, Doctor, it’s all on your account, and I’d do it all ten times over, because I know you’d do the same for me. Because we’re partners, eh?” 

“You’re right,” he tilted her chin up and pressed a kiss to her nose. Just when she thought she was winning, he frowned, and she knew she’d already lost. “You’ve been hurt because of me, and I’m sorry. But that ends now. Here.”

The Doctor pulled out his sonic and pointed it quickly at the vortex manipulator. With the press of a button, the device had shorted out with a muted zap. 

River leapt to her feet, stunned.

“What the hell are you doing!?” 

“Keeping you safe,” he gave her a strange look, one that managed to be both earnest and dishonest all at once.

“The masculine arrogance!” she cried. “What, you get to go out having all the fun while I wait here in my tower for my knight to return!?” she scoffed. “If your plan doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test, Doctor, forget about it.” 

“This is serious!”

“I know.” 

“No, you don’t—”

“Don’t,” River hissed. “Don’t you dare.” 

The Doctor pressed a kiss to her forehead and turned on his heels, eyes set on the TARDIS.

“I love you, River.” 

She grabbed his arm and yanked him back. 

“Don’t you leave me here,” she lowered her voice. “I can help you.” 

“No, you can’t!” 

“Why not!? Because it’s dangerous!? We’ve fought madmen and monsters in every corner of this universe! The Watcher’s just one person with an army made up of people we’ve already beat once!” she threw her hands up in exasperation, carefully surveying his face for any change of heart. All she saw reflected in his eyes, in the straight line of his lips, was his trademark unreadability. 

“Because,” he said coldly. “You’ve already done enough, haven’t you? I told you, it was dangerous, telepathy, like playing with fire. But you didn’t listen.” 

He didn’t mean it. Of course he didn’t mean it. Of course he didn’t blame her. But the only way to get her to stay behind was to make her believe she wasn’t wanted — which was the farthest thing from the truth. She knew better than most what he was, what he could be — a monster with the capacity to be cruel. She’d just never thought he’d be cruel to her. He saw the flicker of hurt in her eyes for a fraction of a second before she took the care to hide it, and as his hearts both broke into rotten little halves, he turned away.

“I told you I was sorry,” she defended. “I didn’t mean—” 

“I don’t want _sorry_ ,” he hissed, and it was the hardest thing he had to do. Each tear in her eye on the verge of falling felt like a world on the verge of ending, and each one that made it to her cheek was a supernova, a black hole, a catastrophe that the Doctor had caused. He swallowed his own guilt and took a breath. “If all goes well, I’ll see you soon.” He stepped outside of the cell and pointed his sonic at the lock.

“And if it doesn’t!?” River rushed toward him, hands wrapping around the metal bars as the affixed themselves back into place. 

“I love you,” said the Doctor once again, this time, with a finality that made River’s blood run cold. Enraged, she shook her head. 

“If you loved me, you wouldn’t be doing this.” 

“That’s exactly why I’m doing it,” he corrected, one foot in the TARDIS and the other right behind. One “I’ll see you soon. We’ll get dinner. I know a place on the lip of a mountain that opens only twice a year — on its equinox and its solstice.” 

“I hate you,” she told him coldly, though grit teeth and a clenched jaw.

He smiled sadly and gave her a fond yet weary look that seemed to show his age. Someone else might have mistaken the twinkle in his eye for wisdom, but River wasn’t someone else. She knew better. 

“No,” said the Doctor. “You don’t.” 

River watched him with a cold expression that might as well have been cast in stone. He paused for a moment, as if he expected something else, something more, some heartfelt goodbye or some saccharine _I love you_. But River’s lips were sealed stubbornly shut, her eyes narrowed and focused. She knew there would be no dinner, no mountain, no equinox, no solstice. She was nobody’s fool. 

The Doctor departed silently, then, with all the intensity of a man embarking on what he knew could very well be a suicide mission, and River matched his hubris with a measured and articulate calm. Okay, she thought. You want it to be this way? Fine. Two can play at that game. 

If he wouldn’t let her help him, she’d just have to do it the hard way. If he wouldn’t take her with him, she’d just have to come the long way round. 

“Alright, Professor,” she muttered to herself. “What have we got? Vortex manipulator? Check. Broken, a bit finicky, a little out of juice, but it’ll get the job done!” She paused, frowning. “I hope. No, no, no need for hope when you’re clever. Hope is a last resort. We aren’t there yet.” 

She secretly only believed in hope as nature’s most lethal weapon; if you give someone hope, they’re dangerous. If you take it away, they’re deadly. River fancied herself a bit of both, on a good day, and so she usually threw caution — and hope — to the wind. But she needed all the help she could get, and so with a deep, slow breath, she closed her eyes and let herself hope she’d be alright, hope she’d save him, hope she hadn’t done irreparable damage. 

“Coordinates punched in,” she muttered. The storm outside was picking up. The electric interference of the lightning wasn’t doing her any favours. If she was spiritual — she markedly was not — this was the point at which she’d try and make peace with some higher power. 

Not many people had the chance to pick their last words this carefully, though, and she figured that was kind of a silver lining, and so she let out a breath and she started to think.

“I don’t love many things. In fact, I love very few things,” she said to no one in particular, fiddling with the manipulator, making final adjustments. “But you’ve taken the one thing I do adore from me, Watcher, and I’m going to find you, and I’m going to burn you for it. Or I’m going to die, too,” she laughed mirthlessly. “But I’ll die with the satisfaction that you didn’t get to kill me. So either way, checkmate!” 

She hit the button. All of reality seemed to rush at her at once, and then it turned on its heels and rushed away with the speed of light, and she was falling.


	2. The Woman Who Vanished (And The One Who Appeared)

“You know,” said Yasmin Khan through a mouthful of cheese toastie. “That’s a really tough question.” 

The question was: If you could go anywhere in all of time and space, where would you go and why? 

The asker was currently frying up sandwiches on a device she’d sent away for in a K-Mart catalogue from 2013. Her answer had been, quite simply, the Big K-Mart in New York, circa 2013, because the Cuisinart toastie maker she’d received in the post was on the fritz, and she reckoned she’d saved up enough points to redeem herself a brand new one.

“It’s not so hard,” replied the Doctor, brushing blonde fringe from her eyes. “You can say literally anything. Anywhere! Any time!”

“That’s the thing,” interjected Ryan Sinclair, leaning against the TARDIS’ console. “There are too many choices. There’s a reason multiple-choice questions only have A, B, C, or D. Too many to pick from, and you just get confused.”

“But this question,” countered the Doctor. “Is open-ended.” 

“Oh, you kids overthink everything! I know where I’d go,” Graham O’Brien was on his third cheese toastie, and he had no intention of stopping anytime soon. He’d worked up quite the appetite running from reanimated fossils on Venus, or hiding from massive killer hornets on Gara V, or uncovering a secret terrorist plot on Xerses Minor. The point was, he was hungry, and he'd earned the right to eat.

“You’re just gonna leave us hanging like that?” Ryan teased. “Where would you go?” 

Graham beamed, as if he’d been waiting ages for someone to ask him that. 

“First, I’d go to the beach.” 

“The beach?” Ryan deadpanned. “You can—”

“Not just any beach,” Graham interrupted. “I’d go to Rhossili Bay in Wales, August of 1979. I was eighteen years old.”

“Here we go again. A walk down memory lane," Ryan muttered. Yaz disguised a laugh as a cough, and the Doctor listened with deep intrigue.

“I went to the beach with my mates the weekend before we all left for university.”

“I didn’t know you went to university!” 

“Oi!” Barked Graham. “Quit interrupting, Ryan, and maybe you’ll learn something else.” 

Yaz and the Doctor laughed at Ryan’s mild embarrassment, earning an under-the-breath curse that would’ve been over-the-breath, had he not known he was so outnumbered.

“There was...let’s see...Johnny, George, and Harry. Johnny was going off to America to study law at some big-name university in Boston, George was going to France, and Harry and I were off to the University of Essex,” Graham went on. “We grew up together; Sunday School in Chingford, summers in Margate and Whitstable, harassing poor old Mrs. Harrison’s trio of poodles over the fence...he was like a brother to me.” Graham laughed, but there was something about his smile that Yaz thought seemed profoundly sad. She nudged Ryan, who’d pulled out his phone, and he quickly tucked it back into his pocket.

“But life is funny, innit?” Graham took a bit of his sandwich and gestured with the remaining square. “We were out in the surf, having the time of our lives, when Harry suddenly went under. We all thought he was joshing — if you’d have known Harry, you would’ve thought the same thing. But after awhile, when he didn’t come up, we realised that he wasn’t fooling around. But it was too late by then. He’d gotten caught up in a riptide and pulled downstream, and by the time we caught up with him, he was blue in the face and cold to touch.” 

A hush had fallen over the TARDIS, and the Doctor had seated herself neatly in between Ryan and Yaz, taking hold of either of their hands. 

“I’m sorry. Graham,” she said. “That’s horrible.” 

Graham gave a dismissive wave. “It was a long time ago. But things were never the same after that. Johnny, George, and I all sort of blamed each other and ourselves, and spending time together after that...it felt like driving a car that had lost one of its wheels. It was unbalanced. It wasn’t right,” he took another bite of his toastie and leaned back against the railing, thoughtful. “We went our separate ways, and I decided against university. It was one of those things I was going to do with Harry, or not at all. I got a job driving busses, and for forty years, that’s what I did. I was always a happy fella, but I never went back to Rhossili Bay. I stepped onto that beach as a boy, and I stepped off it as a man who suddenly knew what it meant to lose someone. After everything — after being sick, after Grace — I reckon it’s time I paid it a visit. Same year. Same day. I know I can’t save him — can’t rewrite history like that. But I feel like I need to see the beach like it was then. It’s hard to explain why, but I just feel that way.”

Ryan, who suddenly felt a bit guilty for ignoring the first half of Graham’s story, quickly stood up. 

“What are we waiting for?” he smiled, clasping his grandfather on the shoulder. “We’ve got a time machine, eh? Let’s go to the beach!” 

“Oh, I appreciate it, lad, but it was just hypothetical, I—”

“I think it’s a brilliant idea!” The Doctor leapt to her feet, pulling a grinning Yaz up with her. “I haven’t been to Swansea in ages! It’s lovely in August.” 

With the toastie maker and K-Mart and New York long-forgotten, the Doctor leapt toward the navigation systems, pressing button after button with a practiced ease. 

And then the lights went out. And then the engines went quiet. And then the TARDIS gave a mighty lurch that sent its passengers scattering every which way. A coolant leak from under the controls pushed plumes of white smoke out with a deafening hiss, and a surge of electricity sent sparks spraying from the console. The Doctor let out a cry as it propelled her backward into the rail.

And then the emergency systems buzzed to life, and everything was eerily cast in blue. Everything was still and silent, aside from the dull creaks and groans of a ship afloat in space. 

“What the hell was that!?” Ryan, knocked off his feet, rubbed a sore spot on his forehead, where he reckoned it had smacked into the floor. Only when he saw Yaz rubbing the same sore spot on her head did he realise he’d smacked into her. His sheepish smile was met with her exasperated glare.

“Is everyone alright?” Graham pulled himself up with a dazed exhale. 

“We’re fine,” Yaz stood up, offering Ryan her hand. He took it, and she helped him to his feet. “Doctor? You okay?” 

Silence. 

Unease circulated like synthetic air, working its way into their lungs and putting a pressure in their chests. If life was like a movie, this would’ve been the scene where things started to go wrong.

It was hard to see through the dim lightning, and dissipating smoke only cast another layer of haze over the room. But from the shadowed corners to the ink-black crevices to the blue-lit glow of the damaged console, there was no sign of the Doctor. No trail of blood, no shred of clothing, no evidence that she’d ever even been there at all.

“Where’d she go?” Ryan glanced anxiously between Graham and Yaz.

“People don’t just vanish!” Graham insisted.

With a gasp, Yaz whipped around on her heels. “But they do sometimes just appear.” 

Graham and Ryan traced her stare to the entranceway of the TARDIS, where dismal starlight filtered in through the window. Standing in the foyer was a woman wearing a torn grey prisoner’s uniform, battered and bruised, with soot on her face and wild curls that looked like they’d been put through an electrical socket. On her wrist, she wore a strange device that sparked and smoked and sizzled, and when it burned through the sleeve of her jumpsuit, it had marred the flesh beneath it, too. She seemed only vaguely aware of the damage, with trembling fingers fidgeting to control, for something to ease the pain. As the trio rushed toward her, she dropped to her knees. 

“Doctor,” she muttered, dazed. 

“The Doctor’s vanished,” Ryan told her. 

“Save him,” the woman let out a laboured, desperate breath punctuated by a wheeze. Clutching her abdomen, she doubled over with a groan. 

“Graham, there’s a medical kit under the control panel,” Yaz directed. “Bring it here.” She turned her attention back to the woman. “Save who?” 

“Doctor,” gasped the stranger, eyes damp. 

“Save the Doctor?” 

The woman nodded desperately. “Trouble. I’m sorry. Save him. Help him. Help.” 

With a whimper, her arms went limp and her eyes fluttered shut. Yaz laid her down on the floor, one hand on her wrist for a pulse — present, faint, doubled — and the other guiding her head.

“She said _him_ ,” Ryan looked over at Yaz. “The Doctor said she used to be a bloke.” 

“You think this girl’s from the past, then?” Yaz took the first-aid kit from Graham and quickly popped it open. 

“Or maybe we’re just from the future,” Graham remarked. Time was weird like that.

“She’s got the same sort of pulse as the Doctor.” 

“Two hearts.”

“Two hearts,” Yaz affirmed.

“Who do you think she is?” Ryan watched as Yaz switched on the medical scanner.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I reckon she’s important.” 

***

_River Song was dreaming about tomatoes._

_More specifically, she was dreaming about the tomato plants Amy had in her backyard. Rory tended to them with precision and care, and if even one leaf showed any signs of a blemish, he was merciless in cutting it off from the rest. That was just about the only time he was ever anything close to cruel._

_River walked toward him. She was only a few paces away, but it felt like the expanse between them was vast and wide, a canyon, a gorge. The grass was too green, the sky too blue, and the yellow garden shed in the distance cast no shadows. It was uncanny. It was familiar, yet surreal, as if the whole world had just been shifted a few feet to the left. It was all like a poorly rendered version of life that wasn’t ever quite alive, yet somehow felt dangerously close to death. Something had to be alive in order to die. That was both the beauty and the horror in every breath._

_The sound of Rory’s sheers clipping away at the plants echoed almost deafeningly. As he snipped the leaves, they bled, and bled, and bled, until they watered themselves with their ichor._

_He turned to face River, and he smiled in a way that was too big for his face — a baggy-jumper grin that she’d seen someplace before. Her stomach tied itself into a tightly-coiled knot._

_“Looks like a storm’s coming in, huh?” he nodded toward the sky. It was as blue and as empty as it could’ve possibly been, but Rory had a sixth sense about those kinds of things._

_“Father,” River paused. The distance between them was still too great, but she could feel him standing right in front of her — she could smell his aftershave, she could see the beads of sweat forming at his brow, the red-crimson stains on his shoes. She could smell the tinny bite of blood, too, and it almost made her feel sick. “I’ve done something awful and I don’t know how to fix it.”_

_“These weevils and thrips,” Rory flicked a small insect away from his garden. “They’re everywhere, aren’t they? In the tomato pots, in the rice, in the strawberry plants. They destroy everything, for no reason whatsoever.”_

_They're not the only things that do that, River wanted to say. But she took a breath and focused._

_“I think the Doctor is in trouble." A cool breeze blew in, but the grass didn’t bow, and her hair stayed neatly in place. She swallowed a rising sense of dread. “I think I might be in trouble, too. Everyone might be in trouble. The universe might be dying, and it’s all my fault.”_

_Rory looked at her as if he was only just seeing her there. “Why would you say something like that, Melody?”_

_River shook her head._

_“I’ve died before,” Rory chuckled humourlessly. “It’s never permanent. The only things in life — and death — that are permanent, Melody, are love, and hope, and rage. Was something taken from you? Does that make you angry? Then get angry, River. But never get cruel. Because love and hope are daylight and rage is dusk, and the cosmos applaud those bold enough to hope and brave enough to anger. These things are permanents in a variable universe. Do you understand?”_

_“No.”_

_“You will,” said Rory, and he turned back to the garden. “These damned weevils and thrips!”_

_The bugs were larger now — nearly the size of a fleet of beagles. Their antennae twitched and they chittered away, right up until the moment Rory took his gardening shears and drove them straight through their heads. Instead of blood, darkness oozed from their wounds, creeping across the neon grass like a shadow — the only shadow in sight._

_“I don’t know what to do,” River told him urgently, as if she was running out of air. “I don’t know how to fix this. But I’ve got to.” She only realised then just how angry she really was; the Doctor had left her. He’d abandoned her, like everyone else had done, and he’d gone to his death without thinking for a moment how much it would hurt her. And now the heavy burden of responsibility had landed back on her once more — the prophecy woman, the woman who kills, the woman who doesn’t want to, who didn’t mean to..._

_She had to fix this. She was ground zero of an intergalactic space-time event that would swallow worlds and extinguish stars. A universe without the Doctor. She couldn’t let it happen._

_Rory reached out and put an arm around her shoulders — there was suddenly no space between them at all. Had she moved? Had he? Had the ground contracted like some dandelion-dotted conveyer belt? She didn’t know. She didn’t care. He was her father, and even in the messy world of darkness and dreams, where very little ever made sense and even less meant anything at all, he made her feel safe._

_“I waited 2,000 years for your mother,” he told her, his voice far-off and distant. “I followed her from one corner of the world to the next, from the edge of creation to the centre of it. And then I ran with her from monsters and madmen, toward hope and away from death. That’s what love is, River. Love is knowing when to wait and when to run. When to save, and when to sacrifice.”_

_“I don’t understand,” River shook her head. She’d gotten fortune cookies that made more sense than that. “Please, Father, just tell me what I have to do. How do I fix this? How do I save him?”_

_How do I save myself?_

_“Wake up,” Rory urged, giving her shoulder a gentle shake. “You have to wake up now, Melody.”_

_From the wounds of the weevils and thrips and the lesions on the tomato plants came a sound, a song, an eerie chorus just the slightest bit out of tune._

_Tick tock, goes the clock, it’s time you now must wake._

_Tick tock, goes the clock, the universe will break._

_Tick tock, electric shock, the enemies assault._

_Tick tock, stop the clock, it’s all River’s fault._

_River felt the world in which she stood start to fade slowly; the blue sky gave way to a boundless grey, and just as Rory had predicted, thunder growled in the distance. The grass wilted and died with a faint gurgle and choke, and the tomato plants grew and grew until they were all she could see. The bulbs, once round and red, were rotten and aged, with tufts of fuzzy white mold spreading rapidly across the surface. They reeked of death, sharp and pungent. Darkness poured from the weevils and thrips, and when Rory started to speak, darkness seeped from his mouth, dribbled down his chin. He wiped it on his sleeve like it was nothing._

_“Wake up,” he demanded, his voice layered with a dozen other voices — his own, Kovarian's, Amy Pond's, the Watcher's, every Doctor's whom she'd met, and a chorus of strangers — all saying the same thing._

_“Wake up.”_

“Wake up,” said a young woman in a beige jumper, with breath like cheese toasties. “You’re alright, now. We’ve just got to ask you a few questions.”

River sat up so quickly the blood rushed to her head, and she almost felt the need to lay back down. She quickly noticed that she was handcuffed to the railing of what looked a little like the TARDIS, but it had gotten one hell of a makeover. Towering crystal statues curved toward the console like a giant’s fingers, frozen in time, and geometric blue lights bulged out of the ceiling, a bug’s eyes, ever watchful. She thought briefly of the weevils and thrips, and she shuddered.

“Who the hell are you!?” she demanded, eyes flitting between her three captors. “Where am I?”

“I’m Yaz,” the woman told her. “These are my mates, Ryan and Graham. You’re on the TARDIS. It’s sort of a spaceship, but—” 

“I know what the TARDIS is,” River laughed mockingly. “And this isn’t it.” 

At least, it wasn’t the Doctor’s. Did the Watcher have a ship? River’s stomach gave a nervous lurch.

“It is,” Graham insisted. “The Doctor was just getting ready to take us—”

“The Doctor!” River tried to yank herself free once again, but the cuffs held her in place. “Where is he?” 

“That’s the thing,” Ryan cleared his throat. “She’s gone. She just went away, and right after she did, you showed up.” 

“You were pretty badly hurt,” Yaz nodded toward the medical kit. “Some broken ribs, some nasty burns, and your hearts were all out of sync, like you’d been struck by lightning or something.” 

“I’m fine,” River insisted, almost instinctively. Only after the words had left her mouth did she do a quick assessment to make sure it was true; two arms, two legs, two hearts. No burns. She took a breath, and her ribs...did whatever it was that ribs were meant to do when they weren’t broken. The medicine of the future really was a marvel. She was all too familiar with the Doctor's medical kit. Her head was still swimming a bit, half-longing for the (dis)comfort of dreams and half-trying to remember the journey that had brought her aboard this strange ship. There had been a storm, and pain, and fear...alright, she thought. Maybe she didn’t want to remember that bit after all. But her dream, as strange as it had been, had given her an idea.

But something clicked into place in her mind — something she’d heard, but glossed over. 

“Wait. You,” she pointed at Ryan. “What’d you say?” 

“The Doctor,” he repeated. “She vanished.”

“She?” 

“Uh, yeah,” Ryan looked at Yaz and Graham for support. 

“Blonde, pretty small," Graham explained. "I think her eyes might be green?” 

“I don’t need a description. We aren’t going to find her but posting her face on milk cartons,” River hissed. “Unhandcuff me. Now.” 

Yaz shook her head. Judging by the way Ryan and Graham watched her, River reckoned she was the self-appointed leader of their little troupe in the Doctor’s absence. Good, she thought. At least she knew who to kill first, if it came to that. She almost kicked herself for even thinking such a thing. Just when she thought she'd shaken her troublesome habits, they came back, and the worst part was that she didn't feel particularly guilty about it at all.

“You arrived here at the same time the Doctor went missing. How do we know those two events aren’t related?” 

River scoffed. “You can’t be serious.”

“Deathly serious,” Ryan said. “We don’t even know your name.” 

“I’m River,” she said, and for a moment, it felt wrong. The father she’d dreamt up had called her Melody. She hadn’t been called that in a very long while. But nonetheless, she doubled down. Her identity was hers, and it was one of the very few things she’d ever owned. “Professor River Song. I’m the Doctor’s wife — and his friend. I’d never do anything to hurt him.” _At least not on purpose._

“If you’re her wife,” Graham began, treading lightly. “How come you don’t know she’s a woman now? And how come she’s never mentioned you?” 

River did her best not to take offence that he — she, rather — had never told her new friends that she’d been married. Had their love really meant so little to her? She shook the thought out of her head. It didn’t matter. What mattered was figuring out where the Doctor had gone — and what it all had to do with the Watcher.

“If you don’t believe me, look me up,” River nodded toward the console. It was all back online, now; whatever power had surged through it upon her arrival has evened itself out. “Go on, then. I’m in the database.”

Cautiously, Yaz inched toward the computer and typed in River’s name. 

“‘Professor River Song, department of archaeology at Luna University,” Yaz read. “Species: Proto-Time Lord.’ What’s a Proto-Time Lord?” 

“Not important. Keep reading.” 

“‘Born Melody Pond, on Demon’s Run, date unknown. Daughter of Amelia Pond and Rory Williams. Married to the Time Lord known as the Doctor. Pardoned from Stormcage Containment Facility in the...fifty-second century.’” Yaz paused, unnerved. “‘Status: Deceased.’” 

River gave her a smug smile laced with a particular air of I-Told-You-So. “Well, it’s nice to know I’ll be pardoned someday.” 

“It says you’re dead.” 

“We’re all dead, somewhere in time,” River yanked at her chains. “Now uncuff me.” 

“What were you in prison for?” 

“It said I was pardoned, didn’t it? That means I didn’t do it, and that means it doesn’t matter.” 

Hesitantly, Yaz nodded at Graham, who stepped forward with the key and swiftly removed the handcuffs. Satisfied, River stood up and rubbed at her newly freed wrist. 

“Alright. Here’s what I’ve gathered — I’m in the future. I was aiming for the TARDIS, but I got the wrong one. No — I’ve got the right TARDIS, but the wrong time. Stupid thing,” she glanced down at her wrist, expecting the vortex manipulator. When she saw instead only the pale pink of freshly healed skin, she cursed. “Where’s my kit?” 

“It was pretty beat up,” Ryan plucked it out of a pile of clutter — a slightly scored tube of lipstick, a knife, a broken vial of nail polish. The vortex manipulator was burned, melted, and flickering vaguely, weakly, as if it was struggling to take its final, dying breaths. “You’re lucky it didn’t rip your arm off when it exploded.” 

A flash of a memory. Fire. Heat. Pain. She was traveling through the vortex, but it was distorting around her, like tunnel-vision with a roof caving in, and that roof was on fire and the smoke was choking her, hurting her, killing her...

“Yeah,” River took a deep breath. “It’s shot, alright. She strapped it back onto her wrist, making a mental note to fix it if the opportunity presented itself. 

“You sure you want to put that back on?” Graham blinked.

“What to you care?” River scoffed. “It’s not your wrist that might get burned. Where were we, then?” she began to pace. “The Doctor has vanished, which means that something has happened to one of her previous regenerations to prevent her from ever getting to this point. You’re her friends, traveling with her. Right?” 

“Yeah,” Ryan confirmed. 

“Okay. So you need to listen very carefully to what I say next, because all of our lives — especially the Doctor’s — will be riding on how well you’re all able to follow directions. My directions.” 

“Who put you in charge?” agitated, Graham stepped forward, and River was taken aback by his boldness. She’d pegged him as the sidekick’s sidekick, the guy who was really just along for the ride. Another mindless idiot that the Doctor played fetch with across the universe. Maybe she’d had it wrong. Maybe she had a lot of things wrong. “You can’t just drop out of the sky and start bossing people around.” 

“But I did,” she declared. “And you’re all going to have to trust me. I know the Doctor very, very well, and I know they’re in trouble — all of them. All of their regenerations, throughout time, throughout history, are being targeted by small but violent militia, and if we don’t do something — and fast — the Doctor never would’ve existed. And the price the universe will pay for that is...insurmountable.” 

“How do we know we aren’t too late?” 

“Ryan!” Yaz smacked his shoulder. 

“No, that’s a good question,” River had pegged him for a fool, but he was proving himself to be an objective reaslist. The Doctor, at least, chose her friends wisely. “The bond a Time Lord has with their TARDIS can’t be broken, even in death. The fact that the TARDIS is still here means that the Doctor is still alive somewhere, somehow, sometime. If the Doctor was dead, the TARDIS would be dying, too.” 

That was a lie. The truth was that River could feel him out there somewhere. She was suppressing her telepathy, like she should’ve been doing from the start, but he and her might as well have been soul bound, and some things just couldn’t be suppressed. She could feel his life in her mind, a gentle presence, like the warmth of his side of the bed when he’d get up to put the kettle on. Wherever he was, he was too far away from her to speak to him, and she was too far from him to feel what he felt. But he was out there. She was sure of it.

“So she’s still out there,” Yaz looked up, and River briefly worried she'd put the thought in her head. Yaz seemed wistful, though, imagining the stars high above the ship, and imagining the Doctor stuck somewhere among them. “Somewhere on the edge of time.” 

River nodded. She couldn’t quite get a proper read on this one. Yaz was brave, but soft. Clearly the leader-type, but something about her was almost naturally benevolent. A leader who led only out of necessity, who didn’t prefer to follow, but rather co-lead. But her co-pilot was missing, and she’d been promoted from first officer to captain in the blink of an eye. And she was doing her best not to slip up. There was a danger hidden deeply inside people like her. People like her were overeager. They thought with their heart and not with their mind. They did what they thought they were supposed to do, and sometimes, that didn’t align with what they had to do. River made a mental note to keep an eye on her.

“Why would someone want to hurt the Doc?” Graham spoke up, eyes narrowed in contemplation.

“You mustn’t know the Doctor very well at all yet,” River remarked, making her way over to the console. She ghosted her fingers against the control panel and felt the familiar electric tingle as they responded to her touch. She smiled. Some things never change. “She’s a remarkable person. The face I know is brave, but calculating. Clever, albeit a bit pretentious, and kind, but firm. A bit of a prick whose high horse has his head in the clouds, but at the end of the day, he’d do anything to protect the universe — he’d give anything to save it. And he has done, time and time again, sometimes long before the first human looked up at the first star and said wow, look at that, and sometimes long after that first star had gone out. But when you’re that old and that brave and that powerful, you tend to make some enemies who are just as old and brave and tough — and angry.” 

Yaz crossed her arms. She was starting to feel a bit uneasy, and judging by the way Ryan’s fingers drummed against the railing and Graham shifted his weight from foot to foot, she wasn’t the only one.

“And one of these enemies has caught up with her, then?” Yaz asked. “A past version of her. Rewrote her timeline.” 

“Mhmm,” River confirmed, punching in coordinates and pulled a lever that sent the ship barreling back into the Vortex. With a wheeze, the TARDIS protested. “Oh, come off it, it’s not like you haven’t been here before.” 

“What?” Ryan glanced at her, confused. “Are you talking to the ship?” 

“Yes,” River replied, as if it wasn’t the slightest bit mad. “Why?” 

“No reason,” Ryan backed off. “Just making sure I hadn’t missed anything, or whatever.” 

“Where are we going?” Graham was the first to approach River. He wasn’t afraid of much, but he was sort of scared of her, because she’d nearly been burned alive out in space and bounced right back without so much as a wince. The only reason someone could go through that and come out unaffected would be if they’d gone through something worse before, and usually, people who had been through something worse than nearly burning up were perfectly capable of defending themselves.

“Leadworth, 2011.” 

“Why?” asked Yaz. 

“Because I know two people there who can help us. They know the Doctor — my Doctor — and they know about his enemies. We need all the help we can get to solve this.” 

“Hey,” Ryan whispered, gesturing for Yaz and Graham to join him off toward the side of the TARDIS’ control room. “C’mere.” 

With a sigh, Yaz and Graham shared a curious look and headed over toward Ryan.

“What?” 

“You trust her?” Ryan asked.

Yaz shrugged. “I don’t think we have a choice. She knows how to pilot the TARDIS, and she’s our only clue as to why the Doctor might’ve disappeared.” 

“We all want the Doc back in once piece — us and her,” Graham looked over at River. “I just wonder why she never mentioned having a wife.” 

“The computer said River’s dead. Maybe the Doctor was still grieving and didn’t want to talk about it yet.” 

“Yeah,” agreed Graham. He sure knew what that was like. “Maybe.” 

“Alright, meeting adjourned,” River clapped her hands, strolling toward the exit. “We’re here.” 

The trio followed her out of the ship, but they didn’t get very far. In the doorway, River had paused, staring in horror at the sight before them.

It was Leadworth. Or at least, it had been. But now, there were industrial towers with smoke stacks reaching up into the smoggy sky. Electric fences topped with barbed wire barricaded muddy courtyards, where miserable workers forged metal and shaped glass. Crowds of people in various colours of construction jumpsuits bustled on the streets, piling into metal tube trains on their way to and from work. No one spoke. No one smiled.

In the background was a tall metal building producing a layer of factory haze, and inscribed on the side of that building, in perfect view for all to see, were the words, “All Hail the Dalek Supreme.” 

They _were_ too late.


	3. The Man Who Sold the World

“Back inside, now!” River cried, shoving them violently back into the TARDIS and sealing the door shut behind them. “We need to cloak before we’re noticed!” 

“Cloak!?” Ryan stammered. “What?” 

“The TARDIS can turn her exterior invisible, and reroute the surrounding energy fields so she can’t be detected by scanners,” River explained. “She can’t operate while cloaked, though, and it's a big drain on the power. We won't be able to take off unless we can uncloak, and if we're cloaked for too long, we'll need time energy like a car needs petrol.” She flipped switches and turned dials and cursed when nothing did as it ought to do. “Stupid new layout! I don’t know where anything is! Oh, Doctor, why do you always have to move things around!?” 

After a moment, there was a muted electronic whir, and a robotic voice declared, “Cloaking mechanism enabled.” 

Stunned, River let out a short breath. “That’s new, the voice. I hate it.” 

“What was that outside?” Yaz demanded. “Daleks didn’t invade Leadworth in 2011!” 

“The timeline’s changed,” River shut her eyes and rubbed at the ache forming between her eyes. This was bad. Very bad. “Somewhere, sometime, there was a very big war between the Daleks and the people of the Doctor’s homeworld, Gallifrey. Because of the Doctor’s influence, both Gallifrey and the Dalek invaders were destroyed, and the war ended. But the Doctor’s been taken out of this timeline, and because of that, the Time War went on, and the Daleks must’ve won.” 

“The Doc never talked about a war,” Graham muttered. “Did she fight in it?” 

“That isn’t important anymore,” River hissed, determined not to give away any more of the Doctor’s deadly secrets. “What’s important, now, is that things are much worse than I thought.” 

She paused. She needed to think.

The Watcher never would’ve willingly collaborated with the Daleks, right? She’d been under the impression that even the most power-mad and insatiable Time Lord was far too clever to do something so stupid, so dangerous, so destructive. But then again, the Doctor was a wild card, too, and the Watcher was a bit like if you took a wild card and drove it mad. How far would a mad wild card go if he had nothing left to lose? 

She suddenly wasn’t so sure about anything: The Doctor. These new companions. Her own role in the chain of events that had led to a world under Dalek rule. She briefly entertained the idea of telling the others about the Watcher, about what he knew and how he’d come to know it, but she could sense that they barely trusted her anyway; all they needed was the slightest reason to believe she was dangerous, and they’d turn on her in the blink of an eye. And if they didn’t work together, no one would make it out alive. She’d have to save the truth — the whole truth, at least — for another time.

River opened a tight compartment under the console and pulled from it a small, circular device. With a wince, she affixed it to her chest, small prongs embedding themselves into her flesh with a series of dull stings. Usually the Doctor had a certain spray that numbed the skin first, but there was no time to look for such soft comforts. 

“Bio-dampener,” she explained to three pairs of confused eyes. “If the Daleks scan us and find that I have two hearts, they’ll assume I’m a Time Lord, too, and they’ll kill us all on the spot. This’ll make my vitals read as a human’s would.” 

“Don’t Daleks kill on the spot anyway?” Yaz crossed her arms, trying her best not to sound too hopeless. But the Doctor had told her stories about the universe’s most ruthless killers, about the cold and tinny cry _Exterminate, exterminate!_ There was almost no way this could get any worse, as far as she was concerned.

“Usually, yes, but I reckon they’re using humans for labour. You saw those courtyards.” 

Well, Yaz thought. It got worse.

River reached for a holster that wasn’t there. “I take it the Doctor doesn’t have any weapons on board?” 

Graham shook his head. “The Doc hates guns.”

River groaned. “Some things really never change. Give me a moment.” 

She leapt over the rail and rushed back into the twists and turns of the TARDIS’ ever-expanding interior without another word. 

“Where are you going!?” Yaz called after her, but River had already put enough distance between them that her shout was barely an echo. 

“Come on,” she urged the TARDIS. “You know me. It’s been ages, but I know the Doctor never deletes his search history, and you never delete my stuff when you reconfigure!” 

Ahead of her, a door came into view. It might’ve appeared from thin air, or it might’ve been there for a thousand years. The TARDIS had a way of keeping those kinds of things a mystery. It was the same as River had always remembered; simple, elegant wood, a bronze handle, a warm aura. She threw it open and rushed inside. The room awaiting was just as she remembered, too; humble, but hardly simple.

“Now that’s a good space-time ship!”

Once upon a time, she’d had a bedroom aboard the TARDIS, and she was standing in it once again. It felt like a ghost, but a fond one. A kind one. Or maybe she was the ghost haunting something from ages past. She certainly felt more like a spectre than a person — out of body, hovering above it all, keeping life at arm’s length. 

Her therapist, a mysterious girl called Luna, had told her it was a coping mechanism. The mind was vast and it tended to wander, and when it wandered to its edge and teetered off, it went all pins-and-needles to keep itself from feeling the impact of the fall. River’s numbness meant that she had, in fact, fallen, and she’d been landing sometime soon into a pit of all the scary things she’d been ignoring. But she hardly had time to dwell on something as silly and complex as feelings now. 

The bed was made up with sheets of red satin, a crimson canopy, a burgundy down comforter, and half a dozen fluffy pillows that never seemed to get too flat. A hardwood floor thudded dully beneath the tread of her boots, and a spacious walk-in wardrobe, which seemed to be just the slightest bit bigger on the inside, promised her the perfect accessory to any outfit, anytime. But she was hardly after a formal gown or diamond earrings. No, she was in search of the weapons locker she’d kept hidden away — even from the Doctor, in case of emergency. Its appearance was triggered by removing a certain book from the ornate shelf against the farthest wall, and when she extracted a first-edition copy of Ernest Hemmingway’s “A Farewell to Arms,” the bookshelf shifted, and ironically, she was standing in an armory.

“More like hello to arms,” she grinned, rather relieved that the Doctor hadn’t been around to roll his eyes. 

She strapped one holster to her thigh and another to her waist, and filled a nearby satchel with anything she reckoned the Doctor’s idiot new friends might be able to use. A couple grenades, a throwing star or two, a pair of nunchucks and a few pulsed energy phasers. All child’s play, really. 

She was on her way out when something else caught her eye, something she hadn’t thought about for what felt like a very, very long time. But the light of the TARDIS shimmered in such a way that drew her eye. It was like it was trying to tell her something.

On the dresser was a locket that had been given to her by Amelia Pond, last time she’d dropped by. It was small and circular and shiny, with a floral pattern on the outer shell and inside, a picture of Amy and Rory on their wedding day. River had protested when Amy’d insisted she take it, but with a mother’s wisdom, Amy had assured her it might come in handy someday. It was made of pure gold, and Amy told her she could sell it if money was ever tight — no matter where in the cosmos one went, gold was always worth something. But River had always kept it safely on board the TARDIS; something to greet her when she came aboard, something to remind her that once upon a time, she was cared for. Without conditions.

"Now's hardly the time for sentimentality," she chided the TARDIS. But it creaked and sighed and shifted, and River knew there was no use arguing with it. "Fine. I don't know what you're playing at, but fine." She snatched up the locket and tucked it into her pocket before rushing out of the room. She felt a faint breeze behind her, and when she glanced over her shoulder, she found that there was only a smooth metal wall where once the door had been.

In the console room, Yaz was pacing.

“Where’d she go? She just ran off.” 

“The TARDIS is massive,” Ryan sat down, head in his hands. “She could be gone for ages.” 

“Maybe there’s a backdoor somewhere,” Graham suggested. “She’s gone off in an escape pod and left us to deal with the bloody Dalek incursion.” 

“Chin up, you lot,” River marched back into the room, triumphantly wielding her yield of weapons. “And pick your poison.” 

Graham blinked, dazed. “Where’d you find all that!?” 

“Doesn’t matter,” River dismissed. “But at least we aren’t going into war unarmed.” She turned to Yaz. “You know how to fire a gun?” 

Nervously, she nodded. “I’m a police officer.” 

“Hmm,” River acknowledged, passing her a phaser. As far as River was concerned, Yaz suddenly made a whole lot more sense. She turned to Ryan and Graham, offering them the satchel. “Just don’t pull any pins out of anything until I say so, and we’ll be fine.” 

“I know how to use a grenade,” Ryan huffed, indignant. “I have played Call of Duty.” 

“I don’t know what that is, and I don’t care,” River approached the console, activated the computer’s search mode, and told it, “Locate Rory Williams and Amelia Pond.” 

A pause. A series of beeps.

“Rory Williams located, 12.58 kilometres due east,” replied the console. 

River glanced over her shoulder at the trio, watching her with disoriented confusion and fear. 

“Any of you got a compass?” 

Ryan pulled out his mobile, happy to finally be of some assistance. “I’ve got a compass app! Does that help?” 

“It’ll do,” River held her hand out expectantly, and Ryan reluctantly placed the device in her palm. 

“Rory Williams,” Yaz knew the name had sounded familiar. “That’s your father, isn’t it?” 

River nodded coldly. “I see someone was paying attention.” 

“He’ll be able to help us, yeah?” 

“He might at least be able to tell us more about what happened here. There’s someone else I need to find, too, but we have to be prepared when we do.” 

“Who?” 

That someone, of course, was the Watcher, and if history was any indication, he would show himself when they least expected it. River left the question intentionally lingering, making it clear that she had no intention of answering. She thought briefly about reaching out with her mind — they’d been linked, after all. But the very thought sent shivers down her spine. Uncontrolled telepathy had gotten them in this mess. She’d vowed to keep her mind as tightly shut as she possibly could. Forever. Period. They’d just have to do things the old-fashioned way, like she’d always done.

“Stay close together, and everyone remember where we parked!” River told them, gesturing for the trio to follow her out of the TARDIS. “And move quickly, but not too quickly. Don’t make eye contact with anyone. And if anyone starts shooting, it’s everyone for themselves. Understood?” 

River interpreted their silence as agreement. She didn’t have much of a choice. As she saw it, they didn’t either. They were going to have to trust each other, come hell or high water, and she figured neither would be too far behind. 

***

Nightfall had brought with it a cold drizzle of rain and a wind that blew through River’s skin and chilled her to the bone. The paved roads had long since changed to narrow dirt paths stretching through the surrounding woods, and for the first time, River was grateful for her prison clothes. Sturdy-soled shoes gave her traction on rain-soaked logs and fallen leaves, and the heavy grey canvas, while hardly posh, kept her warm. 

A few paces behind her, Ryan was complaining. 

“All I’m saying,” he grumbled. “Was that if I knew we were going on a hike, I wouldn’t have worn my good trainers.” 

“The Doctor is missing and the world has been taken over by Daleks, and you’re worried about your shoes?” Yaz scoffed. “Ryan, I sometimes wonder if your brain’s in the proper place.” 

“How old are you?” River called back to them.

“Nineteen,” said Ryan. “Yaz and I both. Granddad’s like, one-hundred.”

“Oi!”

River groaned. “Makes sense.”

Ryan and Yaz were kids, barely out of school, and with the way they bickered, she was starting to feel like she was chaperoning a trip to the Louvre. For teenagers, the world was so fundamentally serious, but it was also a game, a storybook, a place where the good guys always won and the bad ones always lost. But that was hardly reality as she’d known it — even when she’d been a teen herself. 

No, the world was hardly so gentle, and heroes were few and far between. She reckoned all heroes were really just average people who were desperate and afraid, and who were willing to risk their life to be even a little bit less of either. It wasn’t about morality. It was about rage and fear and love and hope and all those other stupid things she couldn’t dwell on for too long.

She was trying her very best to think one step at a time, and not too deeply. If she thought too far ahead, the big picture seemed to grow and rot right before her eyes, and she started to feel a little like she was drowning. To keep herself level and logical, she’d blacklisted a few words from her mind. Among them were “husband” and “Watcher” and “Dalek.” She was keeping the world at a distance. The Doctor was not her love — he couldn’t be; if she thought about him like that, she’d panic, she’d feel sick with guilt and worry. He was just a hostage that she, an impartial rescue party, had to save. The Watcher was not the man who had taken her mind and wrung it out like dirty laundry; he was an idiot who had made a grave mistake, whose own hubris would be his Achillis heel. The Daleks were not an evil who held in their hands — or rather, eyestalks — universal dominion. They were her Golliath and she was their David; her wits were her slingshot, and her courage, the rock. 

“Maybe we can go back in time and stop the Daleks from—” 

“All of time is mucked up,” River interrupted Yaz. “This is the temporal fallout of the Time War. There is no back to go to.” 

“It’s like another timeline, then?” Graham spoke up for the first time. “Like a parallel universe?” 

“If that helps you rationalise it, then sure.”

“What if we went forward really, really far?” Ryan suggested. “To look at the history books and see how the Daleks lost?” 

“What makes you think they lose?” River was getting annoyed. “This is the end of the world. The Daleks don’t occupy places for very long; they show up, they enslave the native populations until they’ve used up all the planet’s resources, and then they fly off into space and blow it up. On to the next conquest. Always moving. Always destroying.” 

“Well,” Yaz cleared her throat. “That’s…” 

“Yeah,” River knew there was no word fit to describe how horrible it was. “It is.”

“Wait,” said Ryan, pausing and holding up a hand. 

“For Heaven’s sake!” River turned to him, fuming. “We don’t—” 

“Shut up!” Ryan whispered. “Listen.” 

Graham drew nearer to Ryan and Yaz, protective. “I don’t hear—” 

“I do,” River held up a hand. A muted series of short inhales, like someone who had just broken out of a run and was doing their best to make it seem like it had been easy. 

“Are we being followed?” Yaz looked around them; back toward the city was darkness. Ahead of them was darkness, too, lit only by the glow of their mobile phone torchlights. 

“Everyone, turn off your mobiles,” River demanded.

“But then we won’t be able to see if anyone’s coming!” Graham protested.

“And they won’t be able to see us!”

“She’s right,” Yaz locked her mobile and tucked it into her pocket, glancing to River with a nod. At her cue, Ryan and Graham put their phones away and stood as still as fear would let them.

Every species in the universe had one thing in common — a fear of darkness, so deeply entrenched in their psyche, so fundamental and so raw. If archaeology had taught River anything, it was to never ignore a pattern. Maybe she even had a little bit of that fear inside herself.

Or a lot of it. Her hands trembled at her sides, and she had to keep herself from grabbing her gun and firing it blindly into the forest. In truth, she felt rather exposed. A target. A sitting duck. Focus, she thought. Focus. The others are counting on you.

She didn’t need telepathy to find a stranger in the dark. She’d trained in the woods as a small girl, with a gun too big for her hands, blindfolded, sometimes, and other times, with ear muffs that made her deaf. It was about anticipating the flow of movement, about thinking like a lion, or a bear, or a hunter, or a killer. Sometimes, all four at once.

She closed her eyes and held her breath and tried to block out everything else — the surge of adrenaline telling her to run, the nagging voice in the back of her head reminding her there was nowhere to run to — and she focused.

Someone was coming. Someone was close. She held her breath and imagined she was small once again, out alone in the woods with a task — hunt, or be hunted. Failure would mean a cruel punishment — a beating, if she was lucky. Night terrors, if she wasn’t. And so fear drove her to succeed, time and time again. She was an expert marksman in time for her seventh birthday.

Amid the sound of her hearts like drums in her ears and the deafening pitter of rain, she could hear footsteps coming, crunching leaves, squelching mud. It could’ve been the wind, but nothing was ever just the wind. A branch cracked. A breath huffed. River turned on her heels and caught a stranger’s arm right before the butt of his weapon could come down against her skull. She’d learned how to fight before she learned how to spell knockout; with efficiency and grace, she wrestled the gun from his arms and had laid him out on his back, pointing the weapon squarely at his forehead with one hand, and in the other, drawing her own pistol as three mobile phone torchlights flicked on and cast them in a pale white glow.

“Blimey,” muttered Graham.

Beneath a tangled beard and a rather gnarly scar spanning the length of his brow, the man laying in a puddle of mud was none other than Rory Williams. 

“Father!” River lowered the weapons and breathed a sigh of relief. For a moment, the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders, and she felt alright. But her sense of calm was a short-lived eye in a hurricane of terror.

“Who the hell are you?” Rory scrambled to his feet, making a move for the gun. River yanked it out of his reach, eyeing him suspiciously. “Dalek spies? Agents of the New Dominion?”

“No,” she told him, as if it should’ve been obvious. All the while, she felt a sinking feeling in her gut. “I’m River Song. Or Melody Pond, depending on who you ask.” 

Rory let out a bitter laugh. “Those Daleks are clever. They tell their spies just what to say and just how to say it. But I’m not an idiot.” 

“We aren’t spies!” Yaz spoke up, stepping forward to stand by River. “Why doesn’t he recognise you?” 

“In this timeline, I was never born,” River had known that all along. “But I’d just thought…” she shook her head. She’d thought he’d remember her. Remember the Doctor. Remember it all, because he wasn’t just some bloke from Leadworth; he was the Last Centurion, the man who had waited, and waited, and waited…

“Give me back my gun,” he demanded. 

River handed it to him. 

“Hey!” Ryan cried. “Why are you—” 

“Relax,” River assured. “It isn’t loaded.” 

“Of course it’s loaded,” Rory pointed it at her, clean in between the eyes.

“Then shoot me,” River opened her arms wide and shut her eyes. “Go on, then.” 

With a frustrated huff, Rory lowered the weapon. “How’d you know?” 

“Because why would you try to hit me with it if you had bullets to shoot me with?” 

“I’m inventive.” 

“But not stupid.” 

With a frustrated groan, Rory tucked the weapon back into its holster. 

“Prove to me you aren’t working with the Daleks, or I’ll prove to you that I don’t need bullets to kill someone.” 

River didn’t like the way he spoke like a veteran, a soldier of a war no one remembered losing. And she especially didn’t like that he spoke that way to her. But deciding not to dwell on it, she cleared her throat. 

“How can I prove it to you?” 

“Start by telling me the truth.” 

“Fine,” River shrugged, feigning a sense of overexaggerated simplicity. “I’m your daughter from an alternate timeline, which collapsed because a psychopathic alien wiped another psychopathic alien out of existence, and if we don’t save Psychopathic Alien B from Psychopathic Alien A, the world will be stuck like this and we’ll all probably die terribly. I came here to find you because I thought your...unique relationship with time might’ve given you a connection to the proper timeline, but clearly, I was wrong, and I’d really like it if we could hurry this up, because I’m actually quite cold standing here in the rain.” 

She heard her companions take in a sharp breath, but no one dared be the first to let it out.

Rory, to her surprise, laughed. 

“Well, that’s just brilliant,” he muttered in such a way that made it clear he didn’t find it brilliant at all. “I have a daughter, and apparently she’s a smartass.” 

“The truth is mad, I know,” River admitted. “But if I was going to lie to you, don’t you think I’d make up something more plausible?” 

“Maybe you’re just a rubbish liar.” 

“Oi! I’m a brilliant liar!” 

“So you admit that you’re a liar?”

River groaned, caught in the trap of her own words. “Oh, that isn’t fair!” 

“Life’s not fair, love.” 

If her life was a campy cartoon, a lightbulb would have appeared over River’s head with the glowing white light of a clever idea. She reached into her pocket, and from it, she withdrew the locket. 

“What is that supposed to be?” Rory scoffed.

“A piece of a history that never happened,” River pushed it into his hands. “Go on, take it. It’s something my mother gave me a very long time ago. Or maybe she hasn’t given it to me yet. The point is, she told me I might need it someday. And she was right. Mums always are.”

Rory snatched the necklace with mild disdain, but when it popped open in his hands and he caught a look at the picture inside, something about him changed. His shoulders sagged and his jaw, once set, went slack. Beneath his bulky night-vision goggles, River imagined his eyes were damp. 

After a moment, he straightened up and cleared his throat. He looked up at River with a sudden familiarity, wide-eyed and tender, as if he was seeing her for the very first time.

As quickly as it had come, Rory choked the emotion back down, tossing the locket back into her hands.

“Fine.” he said coldly. “Follow me.”


	4. Noise

Rory Williams lived deep in the woods at the edge of Leadworth’s city limits, in a converted gardening shed he’d found in shambles almost four years ago to the date. He was never really good at building things with his hands, but necessity, they say, is the mother of all invention, and so Rory had begun to build. 

It had started off as one small room, made of cedarwood, with a sloped glass roof to let in light for the plants. But with a little ingenuity and a lot of work, he’d made it into a home; a rickety porch wrapped around the little hut, with jars full of glow worms stung up for light. A second structure, attached rather haphazardly to the first, served as a bedroom-slash-armoury. He didn’t have a lot of weapons — mostly all Earth weapons had been melted down to aid the Dalek’s war effort — and what he did have barely worked. But he hadn’t had a need for guns in a long while. Not since he decided he’d rather be a hermit than an insurgent. Not everyone was cut out to save the world. Sometimes, survival was the biggest act of war there was.

Amy had once told him that a long while ago, they used to live in the city centre, in a house that was built well by someone who actually knew how to build houses, with a car and a bed and furnace that kept him warm in the winter. But that was Before. Before what, exactly? Well, that’s just the thing. 

“I don’t remember a life before this,” Rory told his visitors, stepping over a charred firelog. They were very nearly to his humble home, and he was taking care to make sure they avoided all the booby traps he’d set. “But somehow, instinctively, I know I had one.” 

“You don’t remember anything at all?” River asked him, incredulous. 

“Nope,” he hesitated. “But Amy did.” 

River’s face lit up. 

“Mother remembers?” She grinned. “Oh, what a relief!”

“How come some people remember the proper past, but others don’t?” Ryan asked. His phone beeped low battery, and he sighed. He hadn’t remembered to bring a charger, and he hardly expected this weird mountain man to have one lying around. 

“It’s hard to say,” River began. “For some people, time runs smoothly and evenly and all the right away, without any hiccups or bumps in the road. But for others, it’s a little bit more complicated than all that. We were in the time vortex when whatever happened happened, I think. Our minds weren’t changed, because we were outside of time at just the right moment.” 

River paused, and decided to take their silence as understanding.

“My mother used to talk about a crack in her wall when she was a little girl,” River continued, glancing up ahead at Rory. “It was actually a break in the skin of the universe, leaking temporal energy; the base code of the universe seeped into her dreams every night. She heard things. Saw things. Things that most little girls secretly suspect, but can never prove.” 

“What kind of things?” asked Yaz.

“Alien things. Proof that the universe is very big and very old, and that some things in it were timeless, or ancient, or otherwise...unknowable.”

“The more I learn about how big and old the universe is,” Graham muttered. “The more I want to slip in bed and sleep it all off.” 

“I think it’s remarkable,” Yaz contested. “And comforting, in a way. I always used to look up at stars and wonder if somewhere, someone on one of those stars was looking at the Earth from someplace far away and wondering the exact same thing.” 

“The romance of space wears off after awhile,” River assured her. “Pretty soon, you don’t feel so comfortable. You just feel small.” 

“Small’s not so bad,” Ryan shrugged. “Rather feel small than have the weight of the world in my shoulders, and all that.”

Yeah, thought River. But the trouble was, it was possible to feel infinitesimally small and still shoulder the weight of the world. It only made it heavier.

Rory paused on the first step of his house, turning to face them. 

“It isn’t much,” he admitted. “But it’s usually just me.” 

River’s brow furrowed. She was about to ask about Amy, but the moment had passed, and as Rory unlocked the door, the others glanced at her for guidance. At her nod, they filed on in one by one.

It was cluttered, but neat — contradictory in a way that was very Pond — with a conduction stovetop made for camping and cans of nonperishables piled high on the shelves. It had the lingering aroma of the flowers that had once filled it, and as Rory lit a homemade candle, River caught a glimpse of blooming plants — peppers and tomatoes and an assortment of fruits — growing happily in the bedroom. 

She thought briefly of the man in her dream, who had tended to his plants with a gentle green thumb but slaughtered anything that dared come near enough. She wondered what her mind had been trying to tell her, then, but quickly dismissed all thoughts of prophecy and premonition. Sometimes nightmares were just dreams gone wrong. They weren’t all ghosts, all spectres, all Ladies in White or elder gods. Just strange thoughts, manifesting in strange ways. She took a breath, and only then did she realise that her chest was tight with worry.

“Make yourself at home,” Rory said, sounding rather displeased at the prospect of company. But he was nothing if not polite. “There’s a shower out back.” 

“That’s pretty cool,” Ryan remarked.

“If you call a garden hose taped to the side of a shed cool, I’m not impressed by the future you say you come from.”

Yaz and Graham chuckled at Ryan, who River noted seemed to be rather good at saying the wrong thing. In fact, he almost made it look like an artform. But it almost seemed on purpose; if he could make his friends laugh, there was a silver lining on even the darkest cloud. River sort of liked him for that. He seemed good, and good people — the really good ones — usually didn’t travel with the Doctor. And when they did, they rarely stayed that way for long.

“I’m surprised Mother ever agreed to live in the woods,” she took a seat on an overturned milk crate, rubbing her hands together for warmth. She tip-toed around the subject of her mum, half-terrified she’d never know what had become of her in this world, and half-terrified she’d find out and hate the answer. She took a breath and sighed. Better to bite the bullet, she thought. “Where is she, anyway?” 

With his back to her, Rory’s shoulders slumped. 

“Amy’s dead.” 

A hush came over the room. Yaz and Ryan inched a bit closer to Graham, who hung his head in silent mourning. 

River had bitten the bullet, and it had shot down into her gut. With a sharp exhale, she dropped her gaze to stare at the mud on her shoes. 

“How?” 

“Does it matter?” Rory hissed.

Taken aback, River shook her head. “No,” she muttered, feeling quite small — in a bad way — and a great deal colder than before. “I don’t suppose it does. I’m sorry.” 

“Why’d you come here?” Rory placed a kettle, cracked and held together with tape, on the stove. “How’d you even find me?”

It took River a moment to remember how to speak. She tucked whatever she was starting to feel into the same little mental drawer she put everything else she didn’t have the time to address. 

“We thought you might be able to shed some light on what happened,” she began, cautious. “We know it has to do with the Doctor, and we also know it has to do with a man called the Watcher.” 

“Do we?” Ryan whispered to Yaz. “I don’t think we knew that bit.” 

“Well, you do now!”

“Like I said, I don’t remember a life before this one. It feels like a dream I can only sort of recall in fading segments. Like a film I saw a long, long time ago,” Rory sat down cross-legged on the floor. “But Amy used to say it was like she woke up one day and the whole world had gone mad. Suddenly there were these robot Nazis from space shipping the fittest off to labour camps and exterminating all the rest. And to the rest of the world, that’s how it always had been. One conquest after another. Living in fear of the day the Daleks would come to our country, our city, our town. And then when they got here, it was like they’d always been around. The New Dominion.”

“And what about the Doc?” Graham piqued up, face cast in candlelight. 

“Amy also talked about the adventures we’d had with him. She wrote everything down in journals. She talked about you a lot, too,” he nodded toward River, who tensed and looked away. “When you said you were River Song, Melody Pond, I thought you were lying." If he had a single weakness in this world, it was her. The Daleks, he thought, probably knew that. "In fact, I hoped you were lying — I don’t want my child to be here in this world. No proper father would.” 

“But I _am_ here,” River told him firmly. “And I’m not going away until we’ve fixed this.” 

Rory sighed. “The Doctor, Amy said, was a saviour of worlds. He’d beat the Daleks before, and she was positive he’d come back and beat them this time, too. Amy wasn’t the only one; there were others who remembered, who’d known the Doctor, and we formed a coalition, a network, a band of rebels in search of a way to set things right. All our plans relied on the Doctor’s return, like some sort of messiah who would rise again, deliver us. But days turned to weeks, and weeks to months, and months to years, and the Doctor never came.” 

“We think the Doctor’s been removed from the timeline,” River explained. “There’s a man called the Watcher — another Time Lord — and he wanted to punish the Doctor for his role in the Time War. He blamed the Doctor for the death of his family.” 

“He’s not the only one,” Rory let out a mirthless laugh.

“The Doctor didn’t do this,” River told him curtly. “It isn’t his fault.” 

“Yeah?” Rory wasn’t convinced. “Who’s is it then?”

Mine, River wanted to say. But a quick glance between her father and the others was enough to convince her to keep her mouth shut. 

“Usually, the most terrible things in the world aren’t anybody’s fault,” Graham sat down. “A perfect storm. That’s what we’ve got here, yeah?” 

“That’s one way to look at it,” River glanced up at Rory, and after a pause, he nodded.

“I guess so.”

“So the Watcher,” Ryan started. “How do we find him? We find him, we find the Doctor, right? And if we return the Doctor to the proper timeline, things will go back to normal?” 

“I wish it was that simple,” River shook her head. “It seemed like the Watcher’s plan was to target key events in the Doctor’s past — big moments, fixed points — and rewrite them. Even if we find the Doctor and manage to bring him — or her — back to 2011, but the Watcher made the Doctor’s disappearance a fixed point in, say, 1941, it could create a paradox and tear reality apart altogether.” 

“So we just have to find out when these things happened and go back in time to prevent them?” 

“You make it sound easy, Yaz,” River rubbed her eyes. “We’d need some pretty advanced equipment to even start a search like that.” 

“We’ve got the TARDIS,” Graham reminded her. 

“If we take off and a Dalek ship follows us into the vortex, we’ve just damned all of time and space. And besides,” she looked at her watch. “We’ll need a way to refill it by now. Cloaking takes it out of her.”

“Rory, you said there were others who remembered,” Yaz began. “We can contact them, and—”

“You really don’t get it, do you?” Rory scoffed. “It’s basically hopeless.”

“Basically hopeless isn’t really hopeless,” Yaz insisted. “Sure, it might look bleak, but we know the Doctor is alive out there, and as long as we know that, there’s hope that all this can be fixed, and that reality can be put back to normal.” 

The kettle began to whistle, and Rory stood up to tend to it. “If you all want to go gallivanting through time, that’s your prerogative. I don’t want any part of it.”

There was a tense quiet as Rory poured his tea into a tin can and took a sip. With a surge of motion, River stood up. 

“The Rory Williams I knew never would’ve given up,” she accused.

“Pity that I'm not him, then."

“You hide away in this little shack while people out there suffer and die!” she shouted, directing all the anger she felt toward herself at him instead. “How can you do that? How can you sleep at night knowing that there’s a regime out there that killed your wife? My mum!?” 

“Not everyone seeks revenge, River,” he took a step toward her, and Graham did, too, ready to hold her back if he had to. 

“But you do.” It wasn’t an accusation. With it came a quiet understanding. “You’re a lot like me. Or maybe I’m a lot like you. But whichever way it is, I know you would never, ever really give up. Not when the stakes were so high.”

“River—”

“Amy believed in a better world, she—” 

“She died fighting for a dream,” Rory set his drink down with such force it splashed out over the edges. “For something that wasn’t real. If it wasn’t for hope, she’d be alive right now! Peace is a dream, Melody, and for God’s sake, wake up!”

He picked up the can, and River slapped it out of his hands. Graham surged toward her, ready to intervene, but Yaz put a hand on his arm, urging him silently to keep his distance. 

"Who the hell is Melody?" whispered Ryan. Yaz elbowed him hard in the ribs.

“If you give up, you’ll let her death be in vain!” River growled, cruel and dangerous. “Life is full of temporary things, things that are there and gone so quickly it’s easy to forget they were ever even there at all. But love and hope and rage are permanent things in a variable universe, and they’re all a package deal. If you love Mum — if you ever loved her — then somewhere inside you, there’s a dying little sliver of hope, and a rage that’s like a fire going out. But if you want to let that die, too, fine.” She turned toward Yaz, Graham, and Ryan. “Let’s go. We shouldn’t have come here,” she shot Rory a livid glance dotted with a sadness she tried her best to hide. “We’ll save the world on our own.”

Hesitantly, the three stood up followed after River, who was half-way out the door when Rory sighed and called out, “Wait.” 

River paused, feeling rather relieved that she had her back turned to everyone else. For a moment, she was sure her face showed just how frightened and alone she felt, just how sad, how guilty, how tired, how cold. By the time she turned to face them, she’d sealed the holes in her composure and mastered the mask of placid nonchalance. 

“The weather isn’t going to get any better, and the Daleks do raids at night,” Rory explained. “If you leave now, there’s a chance you won’t ever make it back to your ship in one piece. And even if you do, you won’t be able to take off. You said it yourself.” 

“And you’ve suddenly decided to start caring about what happens to us?” River lifted a skeptical brow. “A fistful of strangers from the dream-world that killed your wife?”

“River!” Yaz scolded. 

“Don’t chastise me, Yaz, you don’t know me. You don’t know the first thing about me.”

“You’re right,” Yaz crossed her arms, indignant. “We don’t know the first thing about you. All we know is that you showed up at the same time the Doctor vanished, and brought us to a world that’s on the brink of destruction, and who’s the Watcher, eh? You never mentioned him before. You’re a secretive ex-con who likes to play follow-the-leader as long as you’re in charge, but something tells me you haven’t the slightest idea what you’re doing!” 

River approached Yaz cooly, her expression unreadable. Yaz met her stare and matched its intensity.

“And you’re a self-righteous ex-copper who’s running from a bland life, an empty life, chasing the high of adventure across the cosmos,” she sneered. “You can judge me all you’d like, but that won’t change the fact that I’m your best hope of getting out of here alive.” 

“Enough,” Graham stepped in between them, pushing them apart. “This is stupid. Why don’t we all try to get some sleep for now, and worry about the rest tomorrow?” 

River crossed her arms in a frustrated huff.

“Fine,” she managed.

“Fine,” agreed Yaz. 

Yaz returned to Graham and Ryan, and River took a seat on the opposite side of the room. It was only a little bit ridiculous; they were only six feet apart, and that was a generous estimate, but the distance between them was far greater than that which spanned the interior of the shack. 

Rory looked them over, one by one, and he took a deep breath. The hard of head and soft of soul didn’t make it far in this world. There were mercenaries out in the woods, bounty hunters who’d sell rebels to the Daleks in exchange for continued survival, and rival insurgents that would’ve killed him before they ever knew what had hit them at all. But something told him that these strangers — his own daughter among them, whom he’d hoped had been spared the cruelty of a world like this — were neither hard-headed nor tender-hearted. They cared, but maybe caring wasn’t a sin. 

They all cared so much he could feel it in the way they shouted, in the heat-exchange of insults they tossed like hand-grenades. But hope was their weapon. He hadn’t felt hope in a long while, and he realised then that he’d forgotten what it felt like. Looking at River cut him deep, because she sounded so much like her mother, and she had those same green eyes, wide and sad, but fierce. It cut him, yes, but it also gave him hope, and strangely, he didn’t know which hurt worse.

He filled another tin can with tea and silently set it down beside her. She didn't look up, writing furiously in a diary, and as Rory turned away, he thought of the pages and pages in Amy’s journal dedicated to their girl. The fighter, she’d called her. A daughter of the universe, of the cosmos, whose playground is the stars, who’s true mother is daylight, and who’s father is night. (Amy had been quite the poet.) She’d said that Melody Pond was tough as stone on the outside — the bravest woman Amy had ever met, and clever, too — but still a child on the inside. Forever seeking whatever wonder children sought, though she knew damn well such wonder was but a dream. A walking contradiction. A lump of coal with a molten middle. A natural leader who wanted to be good, but refused to believe she was capable of something so gentle. 

Amy’s words were his Bible, and for the longest time, he’d thought the Doctor would be this world’s messiah. But maybe — just maybe — he’d had it all wrong. 

***

_It’s strange,_ wrote River, who had migrated to the porch to escape Graham’s inhuman snoring. _There are a lot of things I know I should be feeling now. Grief, sadness, fear, urgency...and maybe I do feel all that, in fact. But I reckon I feel it to such extremes that the intricacies of individual feelings get all tangled up. It’s like when there’s all sorts of sounds happening at once — so many, and so loudly — that the beeping gets mixed in with the shouting, and the shouting with the rushing beat of your heart(s), and suddenly, all you can hear is noise. That’s what I’m feeling now. Noise. And guilt. Enough to last a lifetime, I reckon._

_Everything is different here. I’d come to find my parents, but my mother is gone and in my father’s place, there’s a stranger. But at least he still makes good tea._

_Ryan, Yaz, and Graham feel like parts of a giftset you get as a present when someone you don’t know very well suddenly remembers it’s your birthday, and just so happens to be at the mall anyhow. They’re a package deal, a bit gaudy, barely useful together and totally useless apart. At least, that’s my first impression. Maybe they’ll prove me wrong. People sometimes do._

_It's just that Ryan and Yaz are so young, and everyone is desperate to feel special when they're nineteen. They’ve just been handed the universe on a silver platter and told to eat up; I don’t have to imagine what sort of things that can do to a youngster chasing the high of the next adventure, bored to death with the mundane nuance of everyday life. It’s all well and good until you realise the universe isn’t all sunshine and rainbows and intergalactic love affairs; sometimes, people are evil. Sometimes, bad people win, and good people lose, and sometimes the good people are a bit rubbish and the bad have a heart underneath their cold facade. Sometimes you love people who change or die or get taken away from you right when you want them around the most. It’s easy to think that traveling through the universe is one big field trip, with pit stops at Martian diners and holiday resorts on Ganymede. But one day you stop to catch your breath, and you realise you aren’t chasing the next adventure; you’re running from enemies you made on your last one. And by that point, you can't stop._

_My father lives in a hut in the woods that looks like he built it himself. The trouble is, he isn’t much of a builder, and the floorboards are sideways, the walls have nails jutting out, and everything sort of smells a little like mold. No, he isn’t a builder, but when I knew him, he also wasn’t a lot of the things he seems to be now. He’s angry. I think he might be scared, too. I’m not very good at reading people, if I’m honest, and most of the time when I try, I end up sticking my foot in my mouth in one way or another. But rage is unmistakable; the subtle tremble in a hand, the tension in a jaw. The trouble with sadness and fear is that they look a little different on everyone. The Doctor shouts. I rarely ever do, at least not when I'm angry. Kovarian’s silence used to be so filled with red-hot rage it could level a forest. My mother used to kick at things like they cared they were being kicked at._

_But my father — the version I knew — had a way of quietly understanding whatever was happening to him, usually with an exasperated sigh and a muttered, “This is just my luck, innit?” But never confuse understanding with acceptance. He understood that 2,000 years was a long time, too long to wait for anyone. But he never accepted that. When it came to my mum, there was no sacrifice too grand in his eyes, no excess too...well, excessive. He would’ve done anything for her. I still believe that he will._

_He’s got a scar on his face that tells a story I’m not sure his mouth ever could. He’s got a grit that leads me to believe he hasn’t accepted any of this, even though he says he thinks it’s hopeless. If he really thought so, he wouldn’t have let us stay the night._

_I read a book once that said, “Grief is an amputation, but hope is incurable hemophilia: you bleed and bleed and bleed.” I reckon that’s true. Some wounds can heal with scars and time, but others rip themselves open again every time you think about them. And every time I think about the Watcher and what I’d done, what I’d told him, it feels like someone is taking a red-hot knife and carving out my hearts, and then sewing them back in again in the wrong place._

_The Doctor said he wasn’t angry. But then he said that he was. He’s a man of many faces in more ways than one, and sometimes, even I don’t know what to believe. Sometimes, even I blame him. Because he walks around the universe like a God making enemies and messes, breaking realities and hearts, and I sometimes don’t know if he realises what he leaves in his wake. But I love him. Love is a choice and yes, I choose to love him. If that makes me a fool, then show me to the jester's court. Loving him was the first choice I made for myself — and I continue to make it each day, and it reminds me of what I am and what I’m not._

_I miss him. I want him here now. He’d know what to do. Or at least, he’d be confident that I knew. I’m really quite good at fooling him. Or maybe he’s just really quite good at pretending to be fooled. Either way, I’m looking at the stars right now, and I’m wondering if he’s out there somewhere. I wonder if he’s frightened? Lonely? In pain?_

_The guilt is eating me alive like some sort of rot, some sort of mold growing on the surface of my soul. I see the plumes of choking smoke wafting over the trees and I know that it’s my fault. I see my father’s grief and I know that it’s my fault. My mum would know what to say. Mothers always know. She’d tell me to stand up, stretch, and breathe, and to stop waiting around for an answer that would never come because I’m asking the wrong question. The trouble is, I don’t know what question I should be asking, and there’s just so much noise. I can’t think. Distant sounds of machinery, grinding, grinding, grinding all night, and I imagine the ache in the arms of those poor old sods working the devices, flesh hot under the glow of a Dalek ray gun..._

_Oh Doctor, my love, I’m sorry. You warned me. You told me mental power wasn’t a toy, that I didn’t understand it yet, that it was like I was leaving the door to my flat wide open with a big, flashing neon sign that said “Thoughts inside! Come and rob me!”_

_You told me that you loved me in Stormcage, and I was too proud to say it back. I should’ve said it back. Now I might never get to say it again._

_~~I should’ve~~ _

_~~I just couldn’t~~ _

_~~I don’t~~ _

_I’m sorry._

River slammed her journal shut with a quiet huff and stared tiredly at the sky, almost as if she hoped the parting clouds would form a face, and that face would tell her what to do next. Her eyes were damp, but she blinked her tears away and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. She worried if she started crying now, she’d never be able to stop. 

Behind her, she heard a crooked floorboard creak, and she turned, startled, to find Ryan leaning against the doorframe. Eyes narrowed into a glare, she quickly turned away.

“You get your kicks snooping on girls?” 

“Eh?” 

“How long have you been watching me?” 

“I just got here,” Ryan defended. “Can’t sleep with my granddad snoring and all that.” 

Granddad? Well, that explained what Graham was doing traveling through space with two teenagers. 

“I always liked camping,” Ryan sat down next to her, and River had to keep herself from groaning. She was hardly in the mood for company. “I was a boy scout. I was never really good at it though. Physical stuff isn’t my strong suit. I’m lucky I can tie my shoes,” he chuckled, and by the way he glanced at River, it was clear he expected her to do the same. She gave him a polite smile with a bit of a sarcastic bite around its edge, but that was good enough for him.

“What sort of stuff do you like?” he asked her. 

“Peace and quiet,” River replied. 

“Like at lakes and stuff?” Ryan smiled fondly. “Yeah, I think that too.” He glanced down at the journal. “You write poetry or something?” 

River nearly rolled her eyes. “Do I look like a poet?” 

“Yeah,” he shrugged. “You look sad. And I reckon poets are usually sad, since poems are usually about sad things. At least, I think they are. Poetry really isn’t my thing, either.” 

River looked up, meeting his eyes for the first time. “What makes you think I look sad?” 

“Some people just do,” he shrugged. “Like, you look at someone and think, ‘Wow, I bet they’ve been to war,’ or something, because they have this look on their face like they’re always sorta half-expecting someone to jump outta nowhere and punch them, or shoot them, or knock ‘em over, you know?” 

Oh, River certainly knew. She was surprised at his perception, and slowly started to regret the less-than-kind things she’d said about him in her diary. 

“I’ve never been to war,” Ryan went on. He sure was a talker. “Have you?” 

River paused, lips pursed, and then shook her head.

“It depends on what you’d call a war.” In a way, her whole life had been one. 

“Can I ask you another question?” he rubbed his hands together for warmth. “You can so no, if you want.”

River sighed. “Why not?” 

“Do you like Jammie Dodgers?” Ryan smirked, pulling a pack of biscuits out from the pocket of his coat. River stared at him for a moment, incredulous, and then laughed. She realised after a moment that she was laughing because she was relieved; she’d sort of thought he’d ask her why she’d been to prison, or how she met the Doctor, or some equally complicated and sad question she really didn’t feel like answering. 

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Ryan tore open the package and slid a few sweets into her palm. “I was going to share them with the others, but my granddad needs to watch his sugar, and Yaz was kind of rude earlier. And your dad kind of scares me, no offence.” 

River took a bite, only then noticing how hungry she was. “None taken,” she mumbled through a mouthful. “It runs in the family.”

“He seems like a badass, though,” Ryan popped a biscuit in his mouth and chewed it thoughtfully. “My dad wasn’t around much. It’s all sorta complicated.” 

River snorted. “Don’t even get me started on complicated.” 

“You know,” Ryan kicked at a pebble on the ground. “My mum died, too. I know it sucks.” 

It felt like someone had driven a fist right into River’s gut. She suddenly wasn’t hungry anymore, and once her mouth had gone dry, swallowing the last bite of Jammie Dodger became a bit of a chore. 

“I get it if you don’t want to talk about it,” Ryan went on. “But if you do, I sorta know what it feels like, and I know sometimes it’s easier to talk about it with someone who gets it, because they...you know. They get it. I don’t think a lot of people do.” 

River straightened up and crossed her arms as a gust of cool wind blew. “Thank you, Ryan. That’s sweet of you. But I’m fine. Really.” 

“Really?” 

“No.” 

“But—” 

“But I don’t want to talk about it,” River stood up, brushing the crumbs off her lap. “Listen. This situation is bleak, I’m not going to deny that. We’re going to have to focus entirely on finding a solution, one-hundred percent. We can’t let ourselves get distracted by anything.” 

“You’re allowed to mourn, you know,” Ryan offered her another biscuit, and with a sigh, she accepted. 

“I am mourning. Not everyone drops down to their knees and curses cruel fate.” 

“Guess not,” Ryan thought for a beat, and then popped another Jammie Dodger into his mouth. River wondered briefly if he even chewed them. 

She was gearing up to say something that would prove how perfectly fine she really was, when a new sound ripped through the still night and sent a chill rattling down her spine. It was some sort of wailing siren, distorted by wind and distance, but unmistakable in its urgency. 

“What are the odds that that’s a good sound?” Ryan gulped. 

“I’m going to guess very, very low.” 

Rory rushed outside and grabbed either of their arms.

“Inside!” He cried. “Now!” 

“What is that!?” Yaz was asking, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “What’s it mean?” 

“The Daleks do raids. They just pick a sector and exterminate everything living they come across,” Rory knocked over a shelf to reveal a hatch door hidden beneath it. “Usually, they stick to the city because hardly anyone lives outside of it, but rumour has it they’ve been venturing farther into the woods each time.”

“Why do they announce the raids with a siren?” Graham had read a book or two about war, and though he’d hardly consider himself a professional strategist, some things just seemed like common sense. “Won’t everyone know they’re coming then?” 

“That’s the trouble with Daleks,” Rory grabbed a few canned goods from the counter and tucked them into a pillowcase, which already seemed half-filled with other things. “It doesn’t matter if you know or not. Once a Dalek decides it’s going to kill you, very few people will ever get away. A lot of people say Daleks don’t have emotions, but if you ask me, they take pleasure in knowing that everyone’s afraid out there, hoping their sector isn’t next.”

The icy pause could’ve frozen Hell over. Maybe somewhere, it did. 

“Come on then,” said Rory, unbothered. “Down the hatch.” 

And down the hatch they went.


	5. Half Full of Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone whose been reading and commenting so far!! This has been the most ambitious writing project I've done in awhile and I'm really glad you're all enjoying it!! Hope you're all staying healthy out there :)

“Not that I mind or anything,” Graham started in such a way that made it clear he did, in fact, mind. “But how long are we going to have to be down here?” 

They’d been down the hatch for all of ten minutes, and everyone seemed to be in agreement that it felt like much longer. The bunker had been made to fit two people — Amy Pond and Rory Williams — and recently, it had only had to fit one. Five, in this context, was a great deal different than one. Beyond the main chamber — a muddy and crudely dug circle about five feet diameter — was a narrow crawl space that descended into darkness, barely wide enough to fit a person on their knees. River wished briefly that it was taller, or maybe that she was half her size, but regardless, she quickly brushed that thought aside, and set herself on the rational course of wondering where exactly it went. 

“Until we hear the signal that the raid is over,” Rory muttered an apology when he stepped on Ryan’s shoe. “Sometimes it’s an hour. Sometimes it’s days. Depends on whether or not the sector puts up a fight.”

“Days!?” Ryan’s jaw went slack. “How can we live down here for days?” 

“The alternative might be dying up there,” Rory reminded him coolly. “Take your pick, mate.” 

“What’s the signal?” Yaz asked.

“It’s different every time.” 

“Then how will you know when you hear it?” 

“Trust me,” Rory said, with finality. “I’ll know.” 

Graham glanced over at River and noticed that she looked a bit pale.

“Oi,” he nodded toward her. “You alright?” 

“Yeah,” River wiped a bead of sweat from her brow. “Just a bit claustrophobic, that’s all.” She tensed as she saw something small and fast scurry across the beaten tip of Rory’s boot. “And I really, really hate spiders.” 

“Hm,” Yaz hummed thoughtfully. “I never would’ve thought you were the type to be afraid of anything. Especially not something so small.” 

“Everyone’s afraid of something,” River said sagely. “And the smallest things are usually the most dangerous, because they know how people underestimate them. Never underestimate a spider.” 

“I don’t think spiders are that clever,” Ryan commented. “But I hate them, too. Especially the big, hairy ones, with all the eyes and legs and—”

River shuddered. “Can we talk about something else, please!?”

“What’s in here?” Graham toed at a wooden crate tucked off toward the side of the chamber. It was fastened shut with a bronze clamp.

“A uniform,” replied Rory. “From a human Dalek officer. If a raid ever went south, the plan was to put it on and sneak out with the rest of the human brigade. But I reckon that wouldn’t work now. They know my biosignature. I couldn’t just sneak by.” 

River wondered if that’s how he got the scar on his face, if something had gone sour with the Daleks. She reckoned it was rude to ask, at least in mixed company. It was a bit like asking an amputee how they lost their leg in the middle of a grocery store, or asking a veteran if they’d ever killed someone at the cafe. Some things are better left unsaid, and so River dropped the subject. 

“Human Dalek officer?” asked Yaz, with a shudder. 

Rory nodded gravely. “Some people want to be on the side that’s winning, morals be damned.” 

“History’s full of that,” River crossed her arms. “Betrayal, cowardice, stabbing in the back.”

“That’s a moody outlook,” said Graham. River glared at him. 

“It’s reality.” 

“Reality can be cheery, sometimes, too.” 

“I’d ask you to look outside and find the cheer, Graham, but if you haven’t noticed, we’re in a bug-infested hole in the ground waiting out a raid by robot fascists.”

“You lot really aren’t friends, are you?” Rory observed with a humourless laugh. “I’ve met soldiers from rival insurgent factions that are more civil with each other.” 

“We’ve only just met, really,” Yaz admitted. “Well, we’ve only just met _her_.” 

“We don’t have to be _friends_ ,” River hissed the word as if it was some sort of silly thing only children made a fuss over. “I don’t make friends. It’s boring. We just have to trust each other.” 

“And do you?” Rory’s brow lifted. “Trust each other, I mean.” 

A quick beat of silence was followed by River’s heavy sigh.

“I trust them,” she confessed, a faint admission of a guilt that wasn’t really ever about trust. “I trust them because the Doctor trusted them. I hope they trust me for the same reason.” 

Yaz crossed her arms — and accidentally bumped both Ryan and Graham in the process. 

“I suppose that’s only fair,” she conceded. “Sorry I called you a secretive ex-con.” 

River offered a slight smile. “You weren’t wrong. Sorry I called you a self-righteous ex-copper.” 

Yaz smiled, too. “I guess you weren’t wrong, either. We’ve all got to be something, eh?” 

“Well, that’s beautiful,” Graham cleared his throat, sarcastic. “Now that no one’s going to skin each other alive, can we talk about a plan? I’d like to get back to a world in which the Daleks aren’t in charge, thank you very much.” 

“It’s going to be hard,” Rory sighed, sitting down. “Like I said, most of this world has no memory of any other reality, and even some of the ones that do remember like to pretend that they don’t. It’s taboo.”

“But some fight,” Yaz sat, too, and after a beat, everyone else followed suit. Everyone except River, who was fairly certain it would be just her luck for a spider to crawl into her bra or something if she moved an inch from where she stood. And she had a certain authority she had to uphold. 

“Maybe if we can find out what all those people who remember have in common, that’ll tell us something,” she suggested. “Rory, you mentioned others. A band of rebels, you said.” 

Rory snorted and shook his head. 

“I don’t think they’ll be of any use to us.” 

“Why?” River eyed him, suspicious. “They're dead, too?” 

That might’ve been a bit cold. She winced at the way Rory’s fists clenched at his sides. Clearly, Ryan wasn’t the only one good at saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

“No,” he muttered. “But most of them want me dead.” 

“Why?” asked Yaz.

“It’s complicated.” 

“We’ve got time, mate,” Ryan gestured to the walls of the little bunker, and to the rope ladder leading its way a good storey or so back up to the surface. 

“Alright, fine, but you get the condensed version,” he paused, and when no protest was heard, he figured that was good enough for them. “When Amy died, it felt like all the work we were doing had been for nothing, because we were still losing. And after losing over, and over, and over again, you get to thinking that the game might not be fair, and who wants to play an unfair match against an army of killer robots?” 

“You gave up?” River asked. He shot her a glare. 

“No. Not exactly. I just decided I was better on my own. If there was a solution, I’d find it, and the only thing I had to lose if I worked alone was my own life, and suddenly, that meant very little to me,” he laughed, a dry and humourless sound. River frowned. She knew the exact kind of pain that made a laugh like that.

“But the thing about joining up with the Resistance is that you can’t ever leave it,” Rory went on. “You’ve seen things. You’ve heard things. If you get yourself captured by Daleks and interrogated the way they interrogate — more aptly, torture — people they suspect are rebels, the fear is that you’ll tell them what they want to know.” 

“Don’t Daleks have a truth serum for interrogation?” she cautiously watched a spider creep out of its web and inch its way toward a dead fly. With every passing minute, she was really starting to wonder if she’d rather take her chances with the Daleks after all.

“Yeah,” Rory shrugged. “But where’s the fun in that? They’re sadistic bastards, but you know that already. The point is, I left the Resistance and now they’ve got a bounty on my head, too. I only trust three people from this world, and two of them are dead.” 

“Well,” said Yaz, struggling to find a silver lining. “What about the third?” 

As if on cue, a faint scuffling emerged from the dark little corridor — if you could even call it that. Everyone stood up and stood behind Rory, except, of course, for River, who pushed her way through them and stood beside him. One hand on her holster and the other clutching her diary, she narrowed her eyes and tried to squint through the darkness. 

“What is that?” she looked to Rory.

“I hope it’s a badger or something,” Ryan muttered. 

A broad and rare smile spread across Rory’s face. “That, my friend, is the signal.” 

A head popped out from the tunnel, covered in dirt and sweat, and everyone but Rory yelped. A muddy hand brushed a mop of shaggy dark hair from pale eyes, and a voice, smooth and American, stated, “Well, Rory, all’s clear. Bad news for the Green Sector, but all the others are breathing a big ol’ sigh of relief.” 

The intruder pulled himself out of the tunnel and stood up, stretching his arms high above his head and cracking his neck. “Tight fit. And for once, that’s bad.” 

Beneath a layer of grime, Captain Jack Harkness grinned.

“Bloody hell!” River cursed in disbelief. 

“River Song!” cheered Jack, pulling her into a hug she didn’t reciprocate. 

“You two know each other!?” Graham gawked, incredulous. Of course River Song would know the man who dug his way out of a hole in the ground. He didn’t even know why he was surprised anymore.

“In the Biblical sense!” Jack ruffled River’s hair and thumbed a bit of grime from her face — on which the look of utter shock laid unmasked. 

“What’s that mean?” Ryan whispered to Yaz. She shifted her weight uneasily from foot to foot.

“It means they’ve shagged.” 

“Oi!” River turned to her with a glare. 

“Let me get this straight, Jack,” Rory cleared his throat. “In an alternate timeline, I actually have a daughter — River, here — and in that alternate timeline, you’ve shagged her?” 

“First of all, _I_ shagged _him_ ,” with the tips of her ears cherry red, River was suddenly thankful for the dim candlelight. “And second of all, it’s not important, and I will not be answering any further questions. Jack, it’s good to see a familiar face, even if it’s your stupid face. You have no idea the day I’ve had.” 

“I just crawled out of a spidery tunnel, and you’re telling me?” Jack plucked a harvestman off of his blue collared shirt and dangled it in front of her. River slapped his hand and muttered a string of curses only he could hear. 

“This girl’s incredible!” Jack laughed. “She’ll face down an army of Sontarans without even blinking, but if you put a spider within ten feet of her, she’s jelly.” 

“I hate you,” River told him. 

“Yeah, get in line, babe,” Jack clasped his hands together and thought for a moment. “Rory, you had a party and didn’t invite me!” he gave a mild-mannered wave to Ryan, Yaz, and Graham. “Captain Jack Harkness,” he introduced. 

“What’re you a captain of?” asked Ryan. 

“Life,” replied Jack. “And you are?” 

“Ryan. Captain of—” 

“Don’t,” Yaz tapped his arm. “I’m Yaz.” 

“Graham,” he waved. “Nice to see you again.” 

“Enchante,” Jack curtsied. 

“Again?” River stammered. “What?” 

“Details aren’t important.” 

“What the hell are you doing here, Jack?” River asked him, glancing between Jack and Rory, and figuring she’d really, really rather take her chances with the raid now. “And how do you two know each other?” 

“We both joined up with the Resistance,” Rory began. “And, like I was telling you, it’s hard to leave once you’re there. Jack and I helped each other get out, and we’ve been working together ever since.” 

A faint smile lit up River’s face. She knew her father wouldn’t have ever given up, not totally, not entirely, not for good. Timelines may change, but there are certain things — certain characteristics — that rarely ever do. The staying power of Rory Williams was one of those things.

“River, what are you doing here? Bored of prison?” Jack teased. “How’s the food there, by the way?” 

River gave him a look, and he backed off. 

“Sparknotes version of events,” River went on. “The Doctor is being held somewhere on the edge of time by a psychotic renegade Time Lord, and said renegade has got a band of idiots embedding themselves at key points in the Doctor’s timeline trying to write him out of it entirely. I tried to use my vortex manipulator to hop into my Doctor’s TARDIS — chap with a big chin and a hideous bowtie — but he’d broken it and so I ended up in the right place at the wrong time — with them, who you’ve apparently already met.” 

“Wow,” Jack sighed dramatically. “Maybe you have had a worse day than me after all.” 

“There’s something I don’t understand,” Rory was thinking aloud. “Why didn’t the Watcher just kill the Doctor and be done with it? Why’s he still keeping him out there?” 

“For the same reason the Daleks don’t use truth serum anymore,” River muttered darkly. “Where’s the fun in that? And I reckon the Watcher isn’t our biggest problem anymore. He’d be a fool to collaborate with the Daleks — they’d kill him once they were finished with him — but it’s possible that’s exactly what happened.”

“Why are we still standing in a hole if the raid’s over?” Jack pointed toward the rope ladder. “Aren’t you going to invite me in for some tea, Rory?” Jack flashed him that smile of his — an infectious smile with twinkling eyes speckled with the slightest bit of mischief. That mischief is what drew River to him in the first place. He was a con man and a cheat and a liar, but then again, so was she. 

By the time she’d realised she’d been staring, everyone else had noticed it, too, and with a sigh, Rory started up the ladder. 

“I’ll put the kettle on, I guess,” he called. “So much for going back to sleep.” 

“I’d go next, if I wasn’t a gentleman,” teased Jack, gesturing for Yaz to take the rope instead. “Just to give dear Dr. Song the opportunity to stare at my rear.” 

River laughed a bit too loudly. “Don’t flatter yourself. I’m married, now.” 

“Yeah, if I recall, your husband is who got us into the mess,” with Yaz safely up the rope, Jack passed it to Ryan, who took a deep breath.

“I’m really rubbish at climbing.” 

“Well, if you’re going to travel with the Doctor — or River — you better get un-rubbish at it.” 

“Don’t worry, son,” Graham gave his shoulder a pat. “I’ll spot ya.” 

As the two made their way up, Jack offered River the next go. 

“Oh, so _you_ can stare at _my_ rear?” she scoffed. “I think not. Up you go, lover boy.” 

“Ladies first.” 

“I’m not a lady,” River gave him the most unfriendly smile she could manage. “I’m a doctor.” 

“Of archaeology,” Jack laughed. “Alright, Dr. Dig-It-Up, have it your way.”

He started to climb, and once he was far enough up, River followed. She spared a parting glance back at the chamber and the adjacent tunnel. And, a quick glance up ahead at Jack Harkness’ trousers — just out of spite, of course. 

“Dr. Dig-It-Up,” she grumbled. “I’ll dig you up, alright.” 

Once out of the bunker, she unstrapped her vortex manipulator and tossed it at Jack.

“Can you fix this?” 

“What the hell did you do to it!?” Jack ran his fingers along the popped seams, the holes meant for missing screws. “Poor thing.”

“You should’ve seen what it did to me,” River huffed. “I repeat: Can you fix it?” 

“Yeah, but it’ll take awhile, and I need my tools. Listen, if it’s time tech you need, I’m your guy,” Jack tucked the defunct manipulator into his pocket. “I’m talking de-mat guns, inter-dimensional phase shifters, vortex manipulators, but it’ll cost you.” 

“We haven’t got money,” Yaz told him.

Ryan pulled out his wallet. “I’ve got...a couple pounds, a pack of gum, and an Oyster card.” 

Jack did his best not to look amused. “Well, fortunately for you, I’m not talking about money. Money’s useless here. I need a favour. A friend of mine—” 

“Jack,” warned Rory. “I told you to forget about that.” 

“You don’t forget the people you love,” Jack countered with a chill that wasn’t like him. 

“Who?” River asked. “You’ve lost someone?” 

“We’ve all lost someone,” Jack paced, running a hand over his weary features. “My problem is that I’ve found someone. And then I lost him again. I need to get him back, but there’s a bounty on my head in the city. There’s no way I’d make it past the guards. Rory’s got one, too. A bounty, I mean.” 

“We didn’t see any guards,” Graham glanced around at the room. 

“Yeah, you usually don’t until they’re uncloaking to shoot you.” 

The colour drained from River’s face. “There are cloaked guards?” 

“Yeah, duh. Why?” 

“The TARDIS is cloaked in the city,” she leaned against the wall and smacked it, frustrated. 

“Mind the wall,” Rory scolded. “It’s not the sturdiest.” 

“A cloaked guard will be able to see a cloaked ship. They’re out of phase with reality in the same way. There’s a chance they’ve already found the TARDIS.” 

“They can’t break it, can they?” asked Ryan.

“Nah,” Jack shrugged. “Those things are made to withstand the vortex.” 

“But it does mean they know we’re here. And they’ll be looking,” River turned to Jack, pointing an accusatory finger into his chest. “You always were a selfish bastard! You can help us, but you’re choosing not to unless we help you first.” 

Jack smiled pleasantly, unmoved. “It’s not that simple. I would help you if I could. But my friend that the Daleks are holding captive in a labour camp? He’s the only man alive who has the codes to unlock the time weapons chamber, and the connections to the Resistance to access it.” 

“I suppose that makes sense,” said Yaz. “They can’t just give anyone information on weapons like that. What if we join up with the Resistance?” 

“Well, for starters, they’d kill River on the spot.” 

“What?” River startled. “What have I done to them!?” 

“You’re your parents’ child, that’s what,” Jack helped Rory pass around cups of tea. “Amelia Pond was the leader of the Resistance for a very long time. But eventually, she was captured, and before she was killed, some people think she turned.” 

“Turned?” River shook her head. “I-I don’t understand.” 

“For every human that fights the Daleks, there’s a dozen who bow to them. Some have been taken over — the Daleks wear them like a second skin, with the eyestalk poking out right through there,” Jack poked River right on the middle of her forehead, and she slapped his hand away.

“The uniform Rory’s got downstairs,” Ryan remarked. “It’s from one of those people, then?” 

Jack nodded.

“Could be. Or from a member of the so-called lucky few who aren’t in labour camps and who weren’t killed; they’re in positions of diplomacy — which I’d sooner call intergalactic propaganda — Dalek politics, law enforcement, and espionage. They’re called Empire Defense Officers.” Jack took a seat beside River. “See, propaganda and fear are the most potent poisons in the world, and when you combine them with survival instinct, people say and do things they wouldn’t usually say or do under any other circumstances.” 

“My mother would never collaborate with the Daleks,” River said slowly, darkly, dangerously, as if she could’ve killed him for even suggesting such a thing.

“I know that,” replied Jack, treading lightly.. “And your dad knows that. And that’s why we left the Resistance. And that’s why they want to put us six feet under. But the fact is that someone in that organisation sold vital information to the EDOs, which led to the near-collapse of insurgency efforts altogether, and most of them think it was her. The ones who don’t are too afraid to admit it, because then the question becomes, ‘If not her, who?’ and everyone's a suspect all over again.”

River stood up so swiftly the breeze ruffled Jack’s hair. 

“You didn’t tell me that,” she accused Rory, her expression unreadable. “Why?” 

“Because it’s so preposterous that it doesn’t even matter,” Rory huffed. “What they think, I mean. I know what I know about Amy, and no accusation could tarnish the memories I have of her.” He paused and looked away. “And besides, you’ve been through enough. You didn’t need to know about Amy.”

“You have no idea what I’ve been through,” growled River. “No one decides what I need to or don’t need to know.”

“C’mon, cool your jets,” Jack stood up, a hand on River’s shoulder. She shrugged him off.

“Can I speak with you?” she asked Rory. “Privately?” 

“Yeah,” Rory matched her with a tone of faux casualty. “Want some tea first?” 

But River was already halfway out the door, and Rory knew she expected him to be close behind her.

“Uh,” he glanced between the rest of his visitors and the kettle. “Help yourself, I guess.” 

And with that, he followed her outside.

Jack turned to the trio of guests and smiled at them. 

“The problem with those two is that they’ve got the same personality and the same false belief that they need to be tough all the time — and the same secret softness inside them that’s hurting in the same secret way,” he poured himself a cuppa. “They’re both harmless, though.” 

“Really?” asked Yaz in disbelief. Jack burst into laughter.

“Hell no! River Song is an expert marksman and fighter trained in like, a dozen different martial arts. She can kill someone with her eyes shut and her hands tied behind her back. And Rory Williams will do what needs to be done, no matter the cost. How do you think he got that uniform he keeps in the bunker? He strangled the last person who accused Amy of giving up information, too.”

“What information?” Yaz asked, half-because it seemed important, and half-because she didn’t like the other direction the conversation could’ve gone.

“Stuff like when and where the Resistance meets. Names of key leaders of different factions — which rarely get along with each other for some reason. And the frequency to this radio station, which is now on a new frequency, broadcasting information about insurgency efforts,” Jack refilled his cup and took a sip. He pulled a small radio from his back pocket and switched it on. A series of voices emerged through the static, saying nothing of any importance. “And what kind of weapons they have. And where they got those weapons from.” 

“Time weapons?” Graham posited. 

“Yeah. Stealing those weapons back from the Daleks took almost two years of careful planning, and cost the Resistance hundreds of lives. Among them, Amelia Pond’s.”

“How’d the Daleks get time weapons in the first place?” Yaz took a seat, hands folded in her lap. Something wasn’t adding up. “I’m getting that there was a war on, and that the Time Lords lost, but I still don’t understand how that equals this.”

“Time is finicky. Think of it like Jenga,” Jack stacked up a series of books on an orange milk crate. As he spoke, he poked one in particular, inching it out of place to demonstrate his point. “The Time War was one block in a teetering tower of temporal events. When whatever happened to the Doctor happened, that block was wiggled just a little too much, and all the other blocks came crashing down, too.” He pulled a book out from the bottom, and the whole pile thumped to the floor. “Because when you look up at the sky in your world, every star you see is out there because the Doctor saved it. When you look up now, what do you see?” 

Yaz looked out the window. In the sky, there was only darkness.

Suddenly, a voice cut through the radio’s crackling noise and said, “Reporting from the Yellow Sector, security code 8-0-4-1-2-dash-B. The Daleks have apprehended a Time Lord — likely the last of his kind, and are holding him in the City Centre. Over.”

All mouths fell silently agape, and all eyes turned to Jack.

“Message received from the Orange Sector, security code 8-0-4-1-3-dash-A. Does this Time Lord have an alias? Over.” came a second voice. 

“Is it the Doctor!?” Yaz’s eyes lit up, but she pouted when the other three violently hushed her.

There was a pause that lasted only seconds, but felt like an eternity. 

“He calls himself the Watcher, over.”

The trio stared at each other, wide-eyed, hearts in their throats. It wasn’t the Doctor, but it was the next best thing.

Rory glanced out at the wooden expanse, watching a few glow worms blink like tired eyes in the night. 

“So,” he said, wondering why exactly River had called him out there, just to sit and stew in a moody silence. “What’s up?” 

No response.

“Listen, River, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” he sat down beside her on the steps. “Things were happening fast. I would’ve, when we had the time to talk like this.”

River dug around in her jacket and pulled out the locket, handing it to her father. He popped it open to peer at the pictures staring back — happy faces, with happy eyes and happy mouths curved upward into happy smiles. He hadn’t seen a happy smile in years. 

“She was beautiful, your mum,” Rory realised he was smiling, too, which was strange, because all he felt was sad. “You look like her.” 

River snorted. “I don’t, but that’s kind of you to say.” 

“That bloke, that other me, he looks like a good guy, too,” Rory’s smile faded slowly. “River, I need you to understand that this man,” he held up the locket to show her the picture of himself. “He isn’t me.” 

“I know.” 

“And you’re my daughter, yes, and that means I’d do anything in any world to protect you from harm.” 

“Father, this isn’t—” 

“And thinking that I’m anything like that man in that photo, River, will harm you. I’ve killed people. A lot of people. Some of them were good.” 

“You’re not the only one with baggage, River told him with a chill. I’ve killed people, too. I’ve done things. Terrible things, Father,” she thought of the Watcher, and her stomach lurched. “Things I can’t even talk about.” 

Rory looked at her, but River couldn’t tell if his stare held sympathy or something else, something sadder. 

“Who did you kill?” 

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.” 

They were quiet for a moment, listening to the sounds of crickets deep in the woods.

“How’d she die?” River watched him in her periphery, searching for a clue on his face, but he was as unreadable as she’d learned to be. “Mum, I mean.” 

Rory took a deep breath and shut the locket. He couldn’t bear to look at her anymore. 

“There was a mission to get time weapons back from the Daleks. Intel told us that they’d stolen them from the Time Lords in the war, and were keeping them around just in case,” his exhale trembled. “There’s a place in Cardiff where temporal energy is seeping through a rift in time and space. Jack had told us about it. We had gotten the time weapons, but they weren’t charged. Amy was leading a group of people with a few guns to Wales. Then the Daleks found them. Everyone but Amy was killed straight away. She was taken in for questioning, and killed about a week later.” 

River shivered, and she had the feeling it had nothing to do with the wind that tousled her hair. “And people think that when she was captured, she cracked.” 

“Yeah. But I’d bet my life that she didn’t,” Rory replied without missing a beat. “No matter what they did to her. She was too brave. Too strong. Too determined. She’d never give up information that would hurt the people she loves.” 

Again, the image of the Watcher’s cold stare came front-and-centre in River’s head, and she could almost feel the way his fingers closed around her throat, the way she couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t fight. She thought of the way he had made her entirely his puppet, a mouthpiece for spewing information so secret it could — and has — ended worlds. She hadn’t been brave enough, strong enough, determined enough to fight him off. Either Amy had been, or she hadn’t been, and River suddenly didn’t know which felt worse.

“But what if she had done?” she stuck her hands in her pockets and twiddled with spare change, receipts, and long-forgotten candy wrappers. “If she couldn’t help it? If she didn’t have a choice?” 

“There’s always a choice.” 

River suddenly felt a bit sick to her stomach. 

“Would you still love her?” River turned to him suddenly, grasping for straws that might not’ve even been there at all. “Even if she betrayed you?” 

Rory let out a long, slow breath. He seemed tired, but not in a way that sleep could fix. 

“You said it yourself. Love is permanent. That’s why it’s so rubbish. Once you love someone so completely, so entirely, it’s hard to ever stop, even when they’re gone,” he looked at River and smiled with a familiar sadness.

She nodded, understanding in a way she wished she didn’t. “I know what that feels like. I’m not sure where the Doctor is right now, but I know he’s far away. And I know that I love him, still, in spite of the distance. It would be easier if I could just pretend I never loved him, that he was just some bloke I had to rescue. But I know in the most fundamental sense that he isn’t just some bloke.”

Rory understood, too, in a way that River reckoned only he ever could. 

“And you’d do anything to get him back.” 

“Mhmm. I’ll fight any war in the universe if it means getting him back.”

“If you look closely enough and think about it in just the right way, you’ll sometimes find that war is a love story,” Rory watched a glow worm flutter in a jar overhead. “At least, it’s just as tragic as one.” 

River laughed, and Rory suddenly felt as if he’d known her all her life. He couldn’t explain it, but somehow, he knew he didn’t have to. Somehow, he knew she felt the same way. 

“Amy wrote pages and pages about you in her journals. About all the fantastic adventures you went on, about how exciting your stories were, and about how you always seemed so, so sad. Even when you were smiling. Especially when you were smiling,” Rory’s own smile had vanished as quickly as it had come. “I see what she meant, now.”

“I’m not sad,” River defended, caught off-guard. “You’re the second person tonight to tell me I look sad.”

“It’s alright to be sad.” 

“But I’m not,” she hissed, firm and final. Rory backed off, putting up his hands in defeat.

“If you say so.” 

Rory looked at the locket once more, and then handed it back to her. River refused it.

“I’d like you to keep it.” 

Stunned, Rory shook his head.

“This is the last memory you have of your world.” 

“Nah. My memories are all in here,” she tapped her head. “That locket’s the only memory you have of that world. It proves that somewhere, sometime, you were alright. And if I were you, that’d be enough to encourage me to keep fighting.”

Rory closed his fist around the necklace and felt its cool weight in his palm. If he could put into words the extent to which River was her mother’s child — that soft wisdom, that gentle rage — he could fill a book with how much he missed her, and fill a silent night ten times over. But that wasn’t really his style, and so he settled instead for a quiet, “Thank you.” 

“There’s just one more thing,” River said after a pause, sounding uncertain. If she was good at talking about how she felt, she’d mention the guilt, and if she wasn’t so desperately afraid of rejection, she’d mention what she’d told the Watcher, but she was rather rubbish at this kind of thing. Even if she thought about it, let alone said it aloud, she found herself shuffling through vague statements and hypotheticals, running scenarios in her mind that always went poorly for her in the end. She hadn’t found the right script yet. She was beginning to think she never would.

“What is it?” asked Rory, tucking the locket safely into his jacket.

“If I did something very bad,” she began, unable to meet his worried look. “Something that caused a lot of very bad things to happen to people who didn’t deserve to have such bad things happening to them at all—” 

The screen door clattered open, and Jack, Yaz, Ryan, and Graham stood suddenly on the porch, looking winded.

“The Watcher,” Yaz said, earning River’s attention. She stood up, her brief stint of emotional openness abandoned in lieu of more important things. “He’s being held prisoner by the Daleks in the City Centre.” 

“What?” River’s eyes went wide. “How do you know!?” 

“Intel on the com lines,” Jack held up a little device that sort of resembled a cell phone. “They’re calling him the last of the Time Lords, and he’s being held under maximum security.” 

“He can probably tell us where in time the Doc is being kept,” Graham suggested. “And where his little cronies went, too.”

“And,” interjected Jack. “The City Centre is also where they’re holding my friend, the one with the codes to the time weapon arsenal and connections to the Resistance.”

Yaz nodded urgently. “We can kill two birds with one stone. Or save two birds. Either way!” 

“Right,” River took a deep breath. “Alright. How far is it to the City Centre?” 

“Slow down,” Rory stood up, too. “Do you realise this is a suicide mission?” 

A buzz of silence settled over them. 

“The City Centre is the most guarded and protected detainment facility on this side of the planet,” he spoke slowly, carefully. “If you think you can just walk in there and break people out—” 

“I’ve broken into and out of the most secure prison in the universe,” River gestured to her inmate number, stitched into the jumpsuit she suddenly realised she was still wearing. “It’s a walk in the park.” 

“Not when you put Daleks into the mix.” 

“Alright, then,” River felt the steely pressure of all eyes on her. She had a plan. It was sort of like the plan she’d had when she decided to time-jump into a TARDIS — hitting a bullet with a smaller bullet when you couldn’t see your gun. That had gone alright for her, as far as things go. And so this plan — more of a shot in the dark, an inkling of an idea — seemed slightly more promising than it would’ve yesterday. “We don’t break in. We get taken in willingly. The uniform in Rory’s cellar! I’ll pose as a guard.” 

Jack sighed. “River, only men are allowed to be guards.” 

“Great,” she jeered. “On top of everything else, this world is sexist. Women can be just as destructive and evil as men! No matter. I’ll just pretend to be a bloke.” 

“Or a bloke could do it!” insisted Graham. “Blimey, River, you don’t have to be the hero.” 

“It isn’t about heroics,” River hissed. “It’s about logistics. Jack and Rory can’t go; they’re known to the Daleks, there’s a bounty out for them, and they’ll be killed on the spot. With Jack, that’ll only matter for a minute or so, but nonetheless, the plan won’t work. Graham’s a bit too old, and he’ll probably be killed, too.” She paused, a bit sheepish. “No offence.”

“None taken, I guess,” muttered Graham. 

“What about me?” Ryan piqued up. “I can do it.” 

When River looked at him, she saw a child. He was barely nineteen, and in his eyes there was hope and wonder and excitement. He was good. He was tender. Sending him into masquerade as a cruel and callous guard would be a suicide mission.

“I know about the Daleks. I know about their politics, and their social interactions. It isn’t something that I can just teach you, Ryan. Whoever goes in there has to have the background to make it believable. If there’s any suspicion, if they ask you to prove yourself, you’d have to be willing to do whatever they ask of you, and I’m not willing to make you do that.” 

Ryan paused and gave a small nod. 

“I’m good at fixing things. You said your kit needed fixed. Maybe I can help with that.”

“I’ll need all the hands I can get,” Jack agreed. 

River took a step forward, ready to take command, but Rory stopped her.

“I’m not letting you do this,” he said firmly, the tone of father telling his daughter she couldn’t go to the movies; it was a school night.

“You haven’t got a choice,” River shrugged off his hand when it reached for her shoulder. “No one _lets_ me do anything. I just do things. Whenever and whatever I’d like.” 

Rory sighed. He trusted her. She was capable. She was tough. If anyone could survive this, it was her.

“Getting into the facility is the easy part,” Rory crossed his arms. “But how will you get back out?” 

“My vortex manipulator,” River turned to Jack. “Once you get it up and running, you can pop in and rescue me. It’ll be the only time you do that. Usually, it’s the other way ‘round.”

“They’ll scan you and see two hearts,” Jack reminded River. She flashed him a proud and clever smile, pulling back her collar to reveal the bio-dampener affixed to her chest. 

“I’m one step ahead of you,” she teased.

Jack smirked. “You always were.” 

“Get a room, you two,” Ryan grumbled.

“I’ll go with River,” Yaz spoke up. 

“I don’t need anyone to chaperone me!” River insisted. 

“Think about it,” Yaz was just as persistent. “If something happens to you, the mission’s dead. If there’s two of us, we’ve both got a shot at doing this. You can’t find the Watcher and Jack’s mate at the same time.”

“There’s only one guard’s uniform,” Rory reminded her.

“RIght, then,” Yaz shrugged. “I’ll go as your prisoner.”

River laughed. “That’s the stupidest idea—” 

“It’s actually smart,” Jack interrupted. “You can say that Yaz is a high-profile Resistance operative. If you’re as good at talking yourself into trouble as you used to be, they’ll show you right to the centre, where they’re keeping the Watcher and my friend.”

“That’s unbelievably dangerous, Yaz,” Graham shook his head.

“What if they kill you?” asked Ryan, all facades of nonchalance suddenly irrelevant. 

“I guess I’ll just have to trust you,” Yaz looked at River and managed a nervous smile. 

Reluctantly, River nodded. Yaz was right. She hated it when other people were right.

“I suppose it is better if we work in pairs. And don’t worry,” she turned to Graham and Ryan. “I’ll keep her safe.” 

“I can keep myself safe, too,” Yaz rolled her eyes. “You’re as bad as the Doctor!”

“What if I join up with the Resistance, then?” Graham suggested. “They’ve got the time weapons, and once you free Jack’s mate, I'll be able to access them with the codes.” A pause. “And if there is a mole in there, maybe I can find out who it is.” 

“You sure you’re up for that?” Ryan looked him up and down. “Sounds dangerous.”

“Oi!” hissed Graham. “I might be old, but I’ve still got some juice left!” 

“This is insane,” Rory said, laughing bitterly. “River, you have no idea what the Daleks will do to you if they find out who you are. And the Resistance, too, for that matter.” 

“Well, lucky for me, I’m a brilliant liar, and I’m used to being the most hated girl in the room,” she flashed him her best grin. “Really, Father, I can fend for myself.” she softened. “I’ll be alright. Really.”

“So that’s the plan, then?” Jack nodded toward Ryan. “Ryan, Rory, and I on Team Fix-It. River and Yaz off to the City Centre. Graham off to join the Resistance.” 

Yaz shuffled closer toward River and offered a reassuring smile. It was not reciprocated. 

“I don’t like this,” Rory huffed. “It seems like a shot in the dark.” And he knew more than most that bullets shot in the dark tended to miss their mark and strike something innocent.

“Listen, I don’t like it, either,” Jack glanced over at River, thinking briefly how glad he really was to see her, and how much it would hurt to see her injured — or worse. “It’s dangerous. It’s vague. But a shot in the dark is better than no shot at all, and I think, Rory, this is just the shot we’ve been waiting to take.” 

It was true, of course. They’d been sitting around waiting for the right moment, even though they’d long since learned there was no such thing. The universe hadn’t done them many favours, but it had handed them four strangers from the sky who were ready and willing to fight tooth and nail, blood and cartilage. 

“If we manage to fix the world, this reality will be dissolved. Everyone who died here wakes up alive in the right timeline. Amy, for starters,” Jack looked at Rory, who was holding onto the locket so tightly his knuckles had gone white. “Yes, this is dangerous. Yes, some of us might be killed. But we have to trust each other enough to believe with all our hearts that a death here isn’t permanent, because this world isn’t permanent. Somehow, we’ll fix it.” He turned to glance at River, and she was smiling. When he caught her eye, she did her best to pretend she wasn’t.

“Love and hope,” Jack went on. “Those are permanent. We need to hold onto those things until they burn our hands, and then we have to hold on even tighter. Alright?” 

A chorus of affirmations and eager nods, and a somber hush as all eyes turned to Rory.

He considered this for a moment, and finally, he nodded, too. 

“You lot are going to need clothes, or else you’ll stick out like sore thumbs,” he cleared his throat. “I have some extra jumpsuits you can borrow. And River, you can get the uniform from the bunker.”

“From one jumpsuit to another,” River tugged at her prison greys. “It’s my lucky day.” 

They filtered into the shack, but Rory caught River’s arm and held her back. 

“You wanted to tell me something?” he urged. 

River, shaken, let out a stiff laugh. “It’s hardly important now.” 

“You’re sure?” 

“Positively.” 

“Right then,” Rory muttered. “On a scale of one to ten, how confident are you that this plan will work?” 

River paused. “Well, I’m one-hundred per cent sure we’ll all die if we do nothing. All we’ve got to do is find the Watcher, get him to talk, find Jack’s friend, free him from the Daleks, fix the vortex manipulator, go back in time, save the Doctor, and Bob’s your uncle.” 

“So, like, a one?” 

“Two because I’m feeling lucky.” 

“Ah. Great,” Rory huffed. “Hope, love, and luck. That’s what we’re banking on?” 

“That’s what the whole universe is banking on all the time.”

“Alright,” Rory didn’t have any sort of counterargument to that; it was hard to argue with optimism. In fact, he found that he didn’t really want to. It was refreshing. It was new. It felt as though someone had flipped a switch in the dead, cobwebbed cavity in his chest where once his heart beat, and dim but determined lights had clicked on. Gears churned out an aching hope, and when he looked up at the glow worms in their glass prisons, he found that the jars, much like himself, were half-full of light.


	6. Rule 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO I apologise that it's been a bit longer than usual between updates! The world is obviously crazy right now and in the middle of it all, we've moved house!! The new place is absolutely massive (and, I hope, haunted). I've also been getting ready to start my new professorship in August, which is...terrifying lol. But also quite exciting! So that's what's new in my weird life. I hope you're all doing well, staying safe, and finding some semblance of peace somehow, somewhere. Enjoy the chapter!

Captain Jack Harkness was not what you’d call “a good guy.” 

He had no qualms about killing. He never had. Lying was his business. Conning was his trade. He’d slept his way into staterooms and shot his way out. He wasn’t afraid to take risks. That was just the way he worked. 

He liked that River worked that way, too. Only she had a certain je ne sais quoi, a certain heart, a goodness deep down that rose out of her in smoky little wisps. Fog on the water. He liked that about her, too. Sometimes, he might’ve even envied her, though he’d never admit it. 

Their fling had been brief and fun and, most importantly, a very long time ago. They were both young and troubled and running from the type of things they’d later learn came from the inside and couldn’t be escaped, no matter how fast or how clever they were. Their romance was dual parts cathartic and damaging, like so many young flings were, but they’d learned from it. At least, he’d learned from it. He’d learned that whatever poor sod married River Song would be both the luckiest and most damned soul in the universe.

And funnily enough, he was right. She and the Doctor. They were perfect for each other. Two egoists with a penchant for self-hatred? What could possibly go wrong?

On the other side of the room, River was zipping up the army green Dalek agent jumpsuit and stretching out her arms. The sleeves were just a little too long, and the waist, a bit too baggy. She was thinner than she’d been last time they’d met; she’d only been a university student then, living off of poptarts and ramen noodles and the finest gin one could buy (for under ten quid). But if her goal was to pass as a bloke, the jumpsuit would certainly help; it masked her curves and filled out her slender shoulders, and the boots added an inch or so to her height.

“Stop staring,” River told him without even having to look up. “And close your mouth. You’ll catch flies.”

“I’m not staring,” Jack countered. “I’m looking.” 

“Well, stop it.” 

“Alright, alright,” he turned away, looking out the window instead. 

“I’ve got a question, though, for you,” said River, cuffing the legs of her trousers up over her boots. 

“Fire away.” 

“How’d my father get that scar on his face?” 

Jack clicked his teeth. “Too afraid to ask him, huh?” 

“It’s rude to ask someone how they became disfigured, Jack.” 

“Manners died out here a long time ago.” 

“Your manners died long before that,” River smirked. 

“I missed you, you know,” Jack laughed. “It gets lonely out in these woods.” 

“Oh, surely you get by.” 

“Getting by is hardly the same as living, doll.” 

He leaned in close, and River caught his face in her palm and gave him a playful shove. 

“Don’t call me doll.”

“So,” muttered Jack, taking the hint. “You and the Doctor?” 

“Yeah,” River’s smile slowly faded. “Me and the Doctor.” 

“You love him?” 

“More than I thought it possible to love anything or anyone.” 

“Then why do you look so sad?” 

“Because,” said River, and then she stopped, because she was dangerously close to revealing something she’d decided she ought to keep to herself. 

“Well, that’s a well-thought-out answer.” 

“Because I know trouble, Jack, and the Doctor’s in a whole lot of it. I’m worried about my husband,” her expression hardened. “But I don’t owe you a bloody explanation of any of it.” 

“I know.”

“And love hurts, sometimes. I spent most of my life not loving people on purpose.” Because it’s hard to get hurt if you keep everyone far enough away. She didn’t say it, but she didn’t have to.

“You’re tellin’ me,” Jack huffed. “Because love means caring and caring means worrying, and worrying stinks.”

River paused. “Who’s your old fella? The one in the Dalek camp?” 

“Ianto,” Jack breathed his name as if he was making a wish. “Ianto Jones.” He pulled his wallet out of his trousers and from the wallet, he drew a photograph. It was old and worn and yellowed around the edges, but in it, a man was smiling a timeless grin and holding up a fish dangling on a line. 

River took the picture and studied it with a sad smile. “You love him, eh?” 

Jack nodded, unusually quiet. “I do. And it stinks. Because in the real world, the right world — the one we come from, the one with the Doctor — Ianto’s been dead for years.”

River stilled, a chill running up her spine. “ 

“Jack, I—” 

“He doesn’t know. He’s been fighting for his right to crawl back into his grave, and I haven’t had the heart to tell him,” he took a seat on an overturned milk crate. “What does that say about me?” 

River sat beside him on the floor. “That you’re sparing him knowing. Like my father didn’t tell me about my mum. Who would ever want to know a thing like that?” 

“Sure, maybe. But I’m using him as a human sacrifice to put the world back to normal.” 

“And save thousands — maybe even millions — of other people,” and before she knew it, she was quoting from a nightmare that felt suddenly quite far away. “Love is knowing when to save and when to sacrifice.”

Jack scoffed. “Where’d you hear that?” 

“In a dream.” River’s brow furrowed. “I think.”

“Well isn’t that sweet?” Biting sarcasm. It was a language River spoke all too well.

“I’m sorry, Jack.” 

“It’s the way it has to be.”

Frustrated, River crossed her arms and leaned back, her head resting against the wall.

“What I said earlier, to my father, about love and hope and all that. Just poetic platitudes, really.” Usually, that was the Doctor’s area, the platitudes. She always sort of felt like she was lying when she tried it, especially when she wasn’t. “The universe isn’t made up of love and hope. Bollocks, that is. It’s made up of matter and energy and these delightfully neutral atoms that don’t give a damn about life and death. The stars aren’t poetry. They’re hydrogen and helium. We aren’t heroes, Jack. We’re animals cursed with self-awareness. If a deer makes a sound and that sound attracts a predator that kills the deer’s clan, that deer doesn’t blame itself. It finds a new clan. We should be more like that.” 

“What, heartless?” Jack snorted, putting a hand on River’s knee. “I’d rather hurt than feel nothing.” 

“Safe,” River shrugged him off. “I’d rather feel nothing, thank you very much.”

“Misery may need company, but ‘nothing’ is just plain lonely,” Jack thought briefly about how that would make a good line in a song. “And come on. Self-awareness isn’t a curse.” 

“Says the least self-aware man I’ve ever met.” 

“Says the pot to the kettle.” 

“Shut up.”

“Listen, River,” Jack slid off the milk crate to sit beside her, careful to keep a comfortable distance. “Yeah, sure, the universe might be neutral. It might even be bad. But there are good people in it, who want to do good things, for good reasons.” 

“Yeah,” River stared down at her boots, and then up at Jack with a sad smile. “Too bad we aren’t those people, huh?” 

Jack chuckled. “Yeah. Too bad.” 

River tied her hair up into a messy bun and reached for the knife that sat on the table in the corner. Jack eyed her skeptically. 

“You’re giving yourself a haircut?” 

“How many Dalek agents have you seen with hair past their shoulders? It’s already a longshot that they’ll actually believe me. I wish I had some sort of perception filter, but we’ll have to do things the old-fashioned way,” she shrugged, as if it didn’t matter much to her either way. “I’ve always wondered what I’d look like with a pixie cut.”

And with that, before Jack could say anything else, she ran the blade across her hair and a tangle of pale curls fell to the ground. River was left with a short bird’s nest, uneven and jagged, with tightly-coiled wisps of blonde springing up at every angle. She held up a rusted spoon to use as a make-shift mirror, and tried her best not to look stunned.

“You’re dedicated, I’ll give you that,” Jack ruffled her newly cut hair, and for once, River let him. 

“Consider it method acting,” River smirked. “Fake it ‘till you make it.” 

“River? Jack?” Yaz called from the porch. “We’re ready when you are.” 

Jack gave River’s shoulder a friendly punch and stood up. “Will you be careful?” 

“Nope,” she hit him back, harder. Hard enough to sting. And with that, she pulled herself up and headed out to join the others on the porch.

“Didn’t think so,” he rubbed at the sore spot when she turned away, and followed her out to meet the others. 

“You’ve cut your hair,” Yaz remarked with surprise as River sauntered out of the hut.

“I’m committing to the part,” she shrugged. “I couldn’t very well tuck hair like mine under a hat.” 

“Alright,” Rory held up a map he’d drawn on a scrap of old newsprint. “The City Centre can’t be missed. The Daleks keep their most dangerous prisoners behind the inner wall, and so you’ll have to work your way around once you get in there if you want to find the Watcher. But be careful, because they’re always on the lookout for moles and plants. Keep a low profile, and you should be fine. Jack — What’s your mate’s name again?” 

“Ianto Jones.” 

River shot him a gentle glance, and he nodded.

“Ianto Jones,” Rory repeated. “Now River, Yaz — you’ve got the most dangerous job.” 

“I know,” said Yaz, too quickly, too eagerly, saving face. But beyond her confidence was a fear River knew all too well. She took a deep breath.

“We’ll have to be very brave and very clever, but we’ll be alright.” 

Rory nodded, though it was clear he didn’t like it. 

“Graham — I’ve marked where you can find representatives of the resistance. If I were you, I’d use a fake name. Most people do.” 

“What was your’s?” Ryan asked. 

Rory glanced at Jack with mild annoyance. “I was called Jack, and he was called Rory.” 

River snorted. 

“Oi!” Rory chastised. “You try coming up with a fake name staring down the barrel of a ray gun.” 

“I have done,” River boasted.

“Anyway,” Graham cut in. “What do I say to get the Resistance to trust me?” 

“That you’re a citizen of the Dalek Empire and you’re sick of their shit,” Jack said. “Throw in some flowery stuff about justice and a better future. You can let them know that you remember the world before this one, but do it on the down-low, and don’t do it right away.” 

“If there is a mole, that info will make you a specific target for them,” Rory added.

“Choose carefully who to trust. And don’t, under any circumstance, mention that you know me or Rory,” concluded Jack. 

“Sounds easy enough,” said Graham with all the confidence of a man about to walk the plank.

“As for Ryan, Jack, and I, we’ll go to Jack’s bunker and start fixing up River’s vortex manipulator. We’ll communicate with these,” he opened his palm to reveal a series of small communicators, barely the size of a pea. 

“How do they work?” Yaz picked one up and held it in between her fingers, examining it closely. 

“You just put it in your ear. It’s psychic, so if you want to talk to someone, just think about them. It’s got a low-resonance pattern so it can’t be detected by Dalek tech. But we should limit their uses to emergency-only; I’m not a very good inventor, and they tend to run out of juice rather quickly,” Rory explained.

“You invented these?” River examined hers, too; a small black bead, intricate and sleek. 

“With Jack’s help. Borrowed parts from some drained time weapons. I take it I wasn’t much of a tech guy when you knew me?” Rory almost smiled. Almost.

“You once called me to fix your computer, and the only problem was that it was turned off.” 

“Simpler times allowed for simpler minds,” Rory slipped one of the communicators into his ear. 

“We should arrange for a rendez-vous,” suggested Jack. “I think it’ll take me a couple days to fix the kit. Finicky time stuff.”

“A couple days in the Resistance sounds like more than enough for me,” agreed Graham.

“I’d bet we can find the Watcher and Ianto in that time.” 

Yaz looked at River, unsure. “That isn’t very long.”

“I think we’ll be alright,” River assured her. “I’m working on a plan. By the time we get captured, I’ll have one.” 

“Gee, that’s reassuring.” 

“You don’t have to come with me, you know. Do you really want to?” 

“It’s the bloody Daleks, of course I don’t want to come. But I’m coming anyway.” 

“Good,” River nodded. “If you wanted to, I’d be worried you weren’t taking this seriously enough.” 

“Trust me. I’m taking this very seriously. I feel like I could throw up.” 

“I’d really rather you didn’t.” 

“If, for whatever reason, things go belly-up and there’s no possible way one of us will make it to the rendez-vous,” Rory continued, dreading the thought. “We should have a code word. A word that says, ‘don’t wait for me, it’s hopeless, there’s no way I’m making it out of here alive. Carry on the mission.’ And that way, we know we aren’t leaving anyone behind who’s got a chance at getting out.” 

“That’s rubbish,” Yaz accused. “We don’t leave anyone behind, period.”

“This isn’t a game, Yaz,” snapped Ryan, much to River’s surprise. “What about…” he looked around. “Tomato?” 

Jack blinked. “Tomato?” He traced Ryan’s stare to the withered potted plant at the base of the stairs. “Is that how you pick safe words? Just by naming the first thing you see?” 

“Have you got a better idea?” 

“Well, now that you mention it,” 

“Shut it!” River barked. “This is stupid. Tomato is a fine word. Let’s hope we don’t need to use it, eh?” 

Rory seemed contemplative. “You’re all responsible for yourselves and, if you’re working with someone, each other. This is war.” A wind blew the branches on the trees. “War has casualties. Try not to be among them.” 

River and Yaz eyed each other in their periphery, sharing a similar reluctance, a shared doubt. Did they trust each other? Well, they had to. Did they like each other? Not particularly, but the list of people River liked was really rather short, and she wasn’t in the habit of adding new names. 

Yaz, Ryan, and Graham began to say their goodbyes, while Rory and Jack eyed River. She shook her head, confused.

“What are you two staring at me for?” Take a picture, she wanted to say. It’ll last longer.

Rory put a hand on either of her shoulders, a serious look on his face.

“I wish you didn’t have to do this,” he told her.

“But I do,” River replied. 

“I know.” 

“I think you were wrong. You are a lot like that man in the locket,” River flashed him the best smile she could manage. “I’ll see you in a few days. Try not to die while I’m gone.” And with that, she turned on her heels and headed toward Yaz. They had a job to do.

“It’s like looking at Amy’s ghost, if Amy’s ghost chopped her hair off and got a perm,” Rory muttered. Jack put a hand on his shoulder.

“She’ll be back,” Jack assured him. “She’s tougher than she looks, and she looks pretty tough.” 

“Yeah.”

Ryan’s presence behind Rory drew him away from River’s fading silhouette. 

“Are we ready?” he asked. “To fix stuff, I mean. I’m studying for my NVQ. I wanna be a mechanic, so fixing stuff is sorta my thing. Though I’ve never fixed one of those before — a vortex thing, I mean — but I like to try new things. But not new food. New tech things, I mean.” 

“Well, Ryan,” Rory glanced between him and Jack, praying the kid had better control over his hands than he did his mouth. “Let’s hope you’re a very good student.” 

***

Yaz had always complained about a lack of interesting assignments on the job. She’d write out parking tickets on a Friday afternoon, and when noon turned to night, she’d sit drunk teenagers in the back of her squad car just long enough to scare them straight. It wasn’t really as glorious as she’d hoped it would be. She’d never made a huge counterfeit currency bust, and she’d never had a hand in breaking up a massive international human trafficking ring, or anything like that. She’d never saved anyone’s life, and she certainly had never taken a life. She was never quite sure that she could, if it came down to it. She reckoned she’d hesitate. 

But for better or for worse, all that changed when she met the Doctor.

She’d seen the universe — more of it than she ever really believed in, and suddenly, it was there proving itself. It was like a fairytale or a dream, but it was real in the way that magic feels real when you’re small; a grand, cosmic Santa Claus. 

But sometimes, it was properly terrifying. For as many colours that danced through the cosmos, rays of purple light and shining green auroras, there were just as many shadowed corners laced in malice, lying in wait for the right moment to strike. Sometimes, space was cold and lonely. Sometimes, it made her feel ten feet tall. Sometimes, it made her feel so small she feared she’d be crushed under some sort of cosmic boot. And sometimes, it made her feel like there was nothing she couldn't do. She could save the world or she could end it. She could save a life or kill. 

The Doctor didn’t believe in killing. In fact, she was really quite the pacifist. But Yaz was beginning to wonder how much of that was a lie. No, not a lie. A facade. A protective barrier. Maybe that’s what the Doctor wanted to be, but wasn’t, or maybe it’s what she really was, but she was just capable of being other things, too. Bad things. Dark things. The kind of things that usually lost in books with happy endings.

River had spoken of a war. She couldn’t imagine the Doctor as a soldier, but then again, she sort of could. And Jack had said River was dangerous, and she couldn’t picture the Doctor falling in love with someone like that. But then again — again — she sort of could. 

“So,” Yaz said, suddenly uncomfortable by the silence that crept along with them as they walked toward the City Centre, and whatever fate awaited them there. “You’re a professor, eh?” 

“That’s right,” River said, a few paces ahead. 

“Archaeology? That’s what the computer said in the TARDIS.” 

“Yep.” 

“Do you like it?” 

“Is this small talk?” River turned to glance back at her over her shoulder. “I’m really not good at small talk.” 

“Yeah,” Yaz agreed. “I’m not the greatest, either.” 

A pause, and then River sighed.

“But it does beat silence, doesn’t it?” 

“Usually,” Yaz cracked a smile. “I’d like to know more about you, that’s all.” 

“There’s not much to know, really,” River shrugged.

“That can’t possibly be true.” 

“And why not?” 

“Because you materialised in a spaceship wearing a bracelet that had electrocuted you nearly to death, and you shook it off like it wasn’t the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to you.” 

River stifled a laugh. “I do get around a bit, I suppose. I like adventure, me. I like not knowing what happens next.” She paused. “Although right now, I sort of wish I had a crystal ball.” 

Yaz nodded in agreement. “Are you frightened of Daleks?” 

“Not frightened, per se. I recognise their power, though, and I hate them. They’re monsters, and like all of history’s monsters — Daleks, Cybermen, Nazis — they always fall eventually, because it really isn’t absolute power that rules the universe.” 

“It’s hope,” Yaz said, and River could hear the smile in her voice. “And love, like you said.” 

River groaned. “That was a pep-talk, not a lesson on reality.” 

“But think about it,” Yaz urged. “You’re here now because the person you love is in danger, and because you hope that the world can be better than this hellscape. Tell me we — collectively, as people — don’t chase love to the edge of the universe. That we don’t need hope to survive as much as we need food, water, or shelter. A world without hope, River, looks a lot like this one, and it’s sort of rubbish.” 

“I can’t argue with you there. This world is rubbish.” 

“Do you believe it? What you said, I mean. About hope and love. I can’t get a read on you, you know.” 

“I believe the bit about rage,” said River. “Funny, how people forget that part because it isn’t as tender. I’m here, Yaz, because I’m angry. And I’m not going to leave here until the world is fixed and I’m not angry anymore.”

Yaz paused. “My mum used to say that anger comes with other things. People get angry because they’re sad or frightened or something. Never just angry for anger’s sake.” 

“If you’re implying that I’m sad or scared, you’d be the third person to do so tonight, and I’m really getting tired of it.” 

“I’m not implying anything,” Yaz shrugged innocently. “Just talking, that’s all.”

“Fine. My turn to talk. Why’d you become a police officer?” 

“Eh?” 

“Smalltalk,” River said, as if it was obvious. “I wanted to have a go.” 

“Alright,” Yaz thought for a moment. “I suppose I wanted to help people.” 

River scoffed. “Then why not become a doctor, or a teacher? Why not start a nonprofit? Join the Peace Corps, or the Red Cross?” she glanced back over her shoulder. “The police are a bit rubbish, you know. They don’t always help people. Usually, they hurt them.”

“Have they hurt you?” 

River shrugged. “And I, them. We sort of take turns. I get the weekends and holidays.” 

“I don’t think it’s right for me,” Yaz sighed, sounding tired — too tired to tell the difference between River’s flippancy and earnestness. “I don’t think anything is, really. The world never really felt like it was made for me.”

“If that’s your mindset, you’ll never properly belong anywhere. Nworld out there is made for any of us, individually,” River looked up at the sky. It was starting to rain again. “See, it’s up to us to find part of the world that feels alright and make it for ourselves. If you keep waiting for the perfect fit, you’ll be waiting all your life.”

Yaz considered this for a moment, and then smiled. “You’re wise.” 

River laughed. “Hardly. Just experienced in the waiting game.” she paused. “We’re nearly there,” River cleared her throat. “We need to talk strategy. Infiltrating a Dalek prison camp is the easy part. The hard part is staying together once we’re in there, and the harder part is finding Ianto and the Watcher.”

“I’ll find Ianto.”

“And I’ll get the Watcher.” 

“How come you never mentioned him before if he’s this important?” 

River’s stomach lurched. “There was just a lot happening at once.” 

“Mhmm,” Yaz didn’t really believe her, but she didn’t have a choice. The walls of the City Centre were coming into view, and they could hear the distant, robotic muttering of Daleks talking to each other. Every nerve in Yaz’s body was telling her to run the other way, but she thought of the Doctor. 

“Rule 7,” she began. 

“Never run when you’re scared,” River looked at her, stunned. Yaz seemed just as taken aback.

“The Doctor told me that once,” Yaz smiled, and River did, too.

“It’s one of the first things he ever told me.” 

“It’s very clever.” 

“And foolish.” 

“Very Doctor.” 

River smiled. For the first time, it felt like she and Yaz had something in common.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Very Doctor.”

“Have you thought of a proper plan yet?” asked Yaz. They stood at the edge of the woods, and the shadows of guards marched proudly by. With a smirk, River pulled a tube of lipstick and a vial of nail polish from her brassiere.

Yaz blinked. “Now really isn’t the time to get all dolled up!” 

“Oh, this isn’t just average makeup!” River said, as if that had somehow been obvious. “The lipstick is hallucinogenic and the nail polish is toxic. If you scratch someone with it, they’re very...open to suggestion. They’ll tell you what you want to know. But only for about five minutes, because after that, they’re dead as a doornail. And the lipstick is specially engineered to only affect biological men.” 

Yaz didn’t like any word of that, but instead of the questions and half-hearted protest she wanted to say, she could only mutter, “That’s a bit heteronormative, innit?” 

“Oi!” hissed River. “I couldn’t very well go poisoning myself with it, could I? I’ve made some that works the other way around, don’t worry, but for our purposes, this’ll do fine.” She pushed it into Yaz’s hands. “If you get into trouble and for whatever reason I’m not there, this’ll buy you some time.”

“So basically, I just go kissing our enemies.” 

“Men have long-since weaponised their masculinity against us,” River said nonchalantly. “It hardly feels radical to weaponise femininity against them.” 

“Can’t argue with you there,” Yaz tucked the cosmetic weaponry into her pocket. “What’s our story?” 

“You’re a resistance operative and I found you hiding out in the woods. Rumour has it that there’s a mole hiding out among the officers, and so I don’t trust anyone enough to hand you over — I’m to deliver you to the centre and question you myself, under the orders of the Dalek Supreme.” 

“The mole bit is clever,” Yaz nodded in approval. “Spark dissent among them; they won’t trust each other, and if anyone asks you too many questions, you can just accuse them of being the mole.” 

River grinned and clapped Yaz on the shoulder. “Now you’re thinking like a warrior! Are you ready?” 

Yaz took a deep breath. “As ready as I’ll ever be.” 

“Alright. Trust me?” 

She nodded. “I do.” 

“Brilliant. Let’s go.”


	7. Ianto Jones

“Well,” said Graham, to himself. “Life comes at you fast, eh? One minute you’re eating cheese toasties, talking with your mates, and the next, you’re in a forest looking to join up with a very cross resistance.” 

He’d always said he wanted to travel when he retired, although if he was being honest, this wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind. He would’ve liked to see China. Mexico seemed lovely, too. Or maybe he would’ve gone north and seen the aurora borealis over Fairbanks, Alaska. 

Granted, he’d seen some pretty cool things in his travels with the Doctor. There was less of a chance that he’d fight aliens or robots or giant killer bees in Fairbanks, Alaska, but part of him sort of liked the adventure; it reminded him that his grief, no matter how big it felt, was really quite small in the grand scheme of things. Maybe some people would feel invalidated by that. Maybe others would lose themselves in the broad cosmos. But Graham? He reckoned he’d found himself there.

But again if he was honest, he’d never fancied himself a soldier. But if ever there was a threat worth fighting against, it was the Daleks, and if he couldn’t follow the Doctor’s command, he reckoned River Song was a good second-best. 

Rory had given him specific directions, and Graham was always good at following a map. Grace would sometimes get lost on purpose — she liked to see new things, even if “new things” rarely meant more than the rusted billboards along the edge of the M25, and if they were seeing them through the windshield while they sat in traffic. If she could see him now, traveling the stars, fighting the bad guys, she’d have a jolly good laugh for sure. Graham smiled faintly at the thought.

The path had turned to a tangle of brush and bramble, and the hem of his trousers kept catching on thorns and burrs. His only torchlight was pale yellow and rather dim; its glow lingered a few feet ahead, and then gave way to darkness. He was starting to wonder if he was going the right way at all. 

The worst bit was that he wasn’t even properly sure what he was looking for. Rory had said most of the resistance operations happened underground; Leadworth used to be a mining town for — you guessed it — lead. And though the mines had long been abandoned and the tunnels left to rot, they made the perfect hideaway. The trouble was, the hideaway was so perfect Rory had warned it could be difficult to find. If he was lucky, he’d said, it might just find him. 

Graham paused. His knees were starting to get a bit sore — he wasn’t as young as he used to be. But when his footfalls stopped, a second traveler’s did not; he held his breath and switched off his light, wondering briefly if he could pull off that martial arts move River had done when Rory ambushed them in the woods. Considering the fact that he’d thrown his back out carrying potatoes in from the market, he reckoned his chances were rather low. But at least he knew Daleks didn’t have feet, and so his chances of being fried with whatever energy ray they shot were equally miniscule. 

“I come in peace,” he held up his hands, as if that line had ever really worked. In an instant, a bright white torchlight was shining in his eyes. He strained to look beyond it at the vague outline of the man holding it up. He could only notice the silhouette of tightly wound curls, a square jaw that went slack after a few seconds. 

“Graham?” gasped the stranger. “Graham O’Brien?” 

And Harry Galligher lowered the torch. The boy from the sea, from the beach in Wales, who the ocean had swallowed up in August of 1979. Except here, he was alive and well.

Graham almost forgot how to breathe.

So much for using a fake name.

***

River Song held Yaz in a wristlock just convincing enough to start to hurt. 

“You alright?” she asked her as they made their way toward the guarded gates blocking off the City Center Detainment Facility. 

“Just peachy,” huffed Yaz. “If you pulled any harder, I think you’d break my arm.”

“Well, then you ought to thank me for not pulling any harder.” 

“Where do you even learn moves like this?” 

“I’m a trained assassin.” 

Yaz laughed. “Yeah, and I’m the bloody queen.” 

River pulled just a bit harder — not hard enough to cause any damage, but hard enough to prove a point.

“Alright, alright!” Yaz hissed. "I believe you."

“Act like you’re unconscious. Trust me.” 

“Just trying to shut me up, huh?” 

“That’s part of it, yes.” 

With a sigh, Yaz was beginning to wonder if this was really the smartest course of action. But for all her mystery and bleakness, River had the kind of authority that Yaz had learned to trust, and so she went limp in her arms, and let her drag her along with a surprisingly tender strength.

“Halt!” barked a Dalek, its eyestalk jolting to a stop right in front of River’s nose. “State your purpose.” 

River jostled Yaz. “I’m escorting a prisoner to her cell under the order of the Dalek Supreme.” 

A pause. River could practically see the gears turning in the creature’s metal head, searching its database for records, protocols, procedures…

“It is not typical for human operatives to escort prisoners.” 

“Well, this is hardly a typical prisoner,” River scoffed. “High-ranking resistance operative. She’s developed tech that can disarm a Dalek at the press of a button. We wouldn’t want to take any chances, eh?” 

“Records indicate that no such technology exists.” 

“That you know of!” River laughed. “Listen, if you don’t believe me, you can take it up with the Dalek Supreme. Be sure to mention that you’re questioning a direct order from your leader and halting the imprisonment of a dangerous fugitive when you’re asked what brought you to the Mothership.”

The Dalek’s eyestalk twitched, and Yaz could feel the residual heat seeping off of its weaponry. She did her best to keep her jaw from tensing. 

Finally, after what felt like an unendurable block of silence, the Dalek scooted out of the way.

“You may pass,” it said. 

“How kind of you,” replied River, with a touch of sarcasm only she could manage in the presence of monsters. “Dutiful Dalek. The Empire thanks you.” 

An electric forcefield sizzled out, and a series of dull overhead lights flickered on as River and Yaz made their way down a long metal corridor. In cells lining either side, human prisoners pressed their faces up against their reinforced glass enclosures, eyes wide and wet and weary. River did her best not to pay them any mind; she was being watched by Daleks and their well-armed agents from a shadowed balcony, and she knew that if she let even a fraction of the sadness and guilt she felt creep onto her face, they’d be outed. They’d be dead faster than you could say, “Exterminate.” 

“We’re in. You’re doing well,” River whispered to Yaz. “Right now there are guards everywhere. Keep it up.” 

Yaz gave her a meagre nod in response.

They came to another forcefield, and just as River was beginning to worry she wouldn’t know how to open it, it dissolved, and a Dalek voice stated, “Now entering maximum security. Unauthorised personnel will be exterminated.” 

“Well,” gulped River. “Let’s hope we’re authorised.” 

Yaz held her breath. She didn’t really know why. She only knew that that’s what people in movies did when they thought they might die. Maybe she’d pass out before she had the chance to see her life flash before her eyes. There were some moments she really didn’t want to revisit.

They entered with a startling ease, and behind them, the forcefield went up again. It would've been anticlimactic, if it wasn't such a relief.

River was surprised to see the guards here were few and far between; there was a whole lot of darkness and a whole lot of silence, but she couldn’t see any Daleks roaming the halls, and the balcony was still and quiet. But that didn’t stop her from feeling like she was being watched.

The main part of the prison was sleek and chrome, but as they walked along, River noticed that patches of the ground were rusted or rotted out, and the walls were caked in stains that looked a little too much like blood for her liking. The only source of light was the orange glow of a furnace powering the city. If River listened closely enough, she could hear the cling and clang of metal digging into coal, and the whimpering and exhausted grunts of the poor souls shoveling it.

“This way must be the entrance to the labour yards we say when we first got here,” River posited, and a chill ran up her spine.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” whispered Yaz. 

“Yeah. But we’ve made it this far. Let’s see if we can find Ianto.” 

Yaz straightened up and smoothed out the wrinkles in her clothes, taking a moment to look around. 

“You think it’s quiet in here because everyone else is out working in the yard?” 

“Maybe. It’s nearly morning.” 

River spotted a pair of men — human, as far as she could tell — guarding the exit a good distance away. An idea began to form in River’s head, and she smiled.

She took hold of Yaz again and began marching toward him.

“What are you doing?” Yaz hissed.

“Trust me,” she insisted, and then called out, “Oi, I was hoping you could help me.” 

The guards looked them up and down, straightening up and saluting. Only then did River noticed the marks on the sleeve of her jumpsuit: three golden circles, one inside the other. The young men guarding the door had only one, and it was silver. She reckoned it was a sort of rank, and by chance, hers must’ve been rather high. 

“Uh, at ease,” she gruffed. “I’m looking to question a specific prisoner by the name of Ianto Jones. There’s a spy somewhere in the City Centre, and I think he and this girl here have intel on who it might be.”

The first boy opened his mouth to speak; his teeth were wired with metal braces. There were freckles on his cheeks and tufts of red hair poking out from beneath his helmet. He was just a kid, River realised. Both of the boys were. Something inside of her started to hurt, and she quickly doused it before it could burn her up.

“With all due respect, sir,” gulped the redhead. “The Daleks don’t usually let us humans interrogate prisoners.” 

“I know,” she rolled her eyes, feigning irritation. “What’s your name?” 

“Liam, sir,” he seemed nervous. “And this is Seamus.” 

“Well, Liam, Seamus,” River gave each of their shoulders a firm pat. “I’m just following my orders. I don’t know what they have planned. But I do know that there’s a mole for the Resistance somewhere in this prison, and if I were you, I wouldn’t question the requests of an officer that outranks you. You wouldn’t want to...draw suspicion, right?” 

Nervously, Seamus nodded. “Of course, sir. We can show you to Mr. Jones’ cell.” 

River smiled menacingly. “I think that’s the right thing to do. But tell me — why isn’t he out with the rest of the prisoners in the workyard?” 

“Well, you see,” Liam fidgeted. “He doesn’t really play well with others. He was trying to radicalise the other inmates, and so they put him in solitary confinement.” 

“Why not just kill him?” 

Liam shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess they think he knows something, and if they killed him, that information would die, too.” 

“Yes, that must be it.” River jostled Yaz, who had become something of the elephant in the room. She could tell that Liam and Seamus wanted to ask, to look, but didn’t dare out of fear of seeming sympathetic. She wondered what they were like in the proper world — Seamus was built like he played rugby, and Liam could’ve been a footballer. They both couldn’t have been older than fifteen or so, and she reckoned they assumed she was around their age, too. She might’ve passed for a boy, but a man? She had her doubts. 

“Here he is, sir,” Seamus stopped before the final cell at the end of a long hallway. It was dark and dimly lit, and droplets of murky water dribbled down the wall into a puddle forming in the corner. River was reminded vaguely of Stormcage, and she tensed. 

Ianto Jones stood up, firm and defiant. 

“I’ve already told you people,” he growled. “You’ll have to kill me before I give up my friends.” 

“Don’t worry. I’m a friend of Jack Harkness’,” River told him, and in one swift motion, she dropped Yaz and made a move for the guns tucked into the holsters around the guards’ waists. Before Seamus and Liam even realised what was happening, Yaz had kicked their feet out from beneath them and they landed flat on their arses, staring down the barrels of their own weapons held in the all-too-capable hands of River Song.

“Sorry, boys," River smirked. "But I think we’re going to need to borrow your uniforms.” 

***

“It was a clever idea to build tunnels connecting your hideouts,” Ryan remarked, dusting the dirt from his trousers. “But you totally could’ve made them wider.” 

“Any wider, and Daleks could’ve fit through,” Jack flipped a switch, and bright yellow lights flickered on around his own shack. It was larger than Rory’s, and much more high-tech. The walls were made of a rusted metal, and the floor, despite its clutter, was lined with tools and tech and books. It was sort of almost posh, like a university or something, but it had the distinct touch of warehouse that made Ryan feel at home — and he wasn’t sure if he liked that.

“So,” Rory began, eyeing Ryan with mingled suspicion and doubt. That’s the way folks always looked at Ryan, for a slew of different reasons than never found themselves based in reality at all. “Have you ever worked on time tech before?” 

“I fixed my granddad’s watch, but I don’t reckon that counts.” 

Jack laughed. “I like this kid.” 

“Liking him is nice, but it won’t help us,” Rory dismissed. He turned back to face Ryan, prepared with his best stern lecturer’s voice and a slew of information he learned the hard way, too. But Ryan was already tinkering away at a vortex manipulator, and when it sparked, he grinned.

“This isn’t so hard,” he looked up proudly. “You know what was hard? My instructor once made us take apart an engine and put it back together from scraps. That was hard!”

Rory and Jack shared a glance that teetered between amused and impressed. 

“Well,” said Jack. “Looks like we’ve got some catching up to do.” 

Just as they’d started to return eagerly to the work, the radio strapped to Jack’s belt loop crackled to life. 

“Urgent message from the City Centre Resistance, security code 4-1-3-A-G, regarding previous message about the captive Time Lord. We’ve intercepted a message that the Daleks have located a time ship cloaked near the labour yards, and intel informs us that they have been collaborating with the captive Time Lord to locate its owner.” The voice seemed frazzled, frantic. “We’re advising the Resistance troops against engaging with the Time Lord — if he’s working with the Daleks, it could be a trap. Over.” 

Jack paled and glanced between Rory and Ryan. Neither seemed too sure of what to make of the message, but one thing seemed clear.

“They found the TARDIS,” Ryan muttered in disbelief.

“And if it is a trap…” Jack could hardly bear to think of it.

Rory dropped his head into his hands. “We just sent the girls right into it.”


	8. Old Friends, New Enemies

“I can’t believe it!” cried Harry, his arm around Graham’s shoulders as he guided him through the woods. “I saw you die, Graham. In a Dalek raid just after the invasion started.”

“Me!?” Graham laughed, because that’s about the only thing he could do. There was probably a better way to respond to the news of your own death, but Graham certainly didn’t know it. “I saw you die! We were just lads on the beach.” He shut his eyes, and he thought of Wales, and he could feel everything he’d felt back then. The warmth of the sun on the back of his neck, the prickly of saltwater at his lips. It was all like a dream, far away and faded. Yet vivid and real. As real as anything had ever been.

“But here we are, old friend,” Harry paused. “Both alive and well. It’s true then, I suppose. What they say about the other world.” 

“You don’t remember it?” 

Harry shook his head. 

“But a lot of the folks around here do. Those of us who don’t...well, I’m sure you could understand that it’s hard to believe.” 

“There are a lot of things I thought I’d never believe in, but now I know that they’re real. Aliens, other worlds.” 

“Yeah,” Harry put out his torch, and Graham did the same. “Some of us sort of thought the other world was a metaphor or an allegory for what we’re fighting for. But those who claimed to remember it said it was more than that. Now, I know it is.” 

Any plan Graham had started to have had been reduced to a pile of ash; he’d planned on keeping a low profile, but it turned out, Harry was the leader of this particular branch of Resistance. He’d planned on using a fake name, but that suddenly didn’t seem possible. He’d planned on avoiding the topic of the other world, but there he stood — a beacon of it’s truth, proof of the unprovable. 

“Are you alright?” Harry asked him. “You look nervous.” 

“Oh, I’m just thinking,” muttered Graham. “Listen, Harry, I know you have questions. But I don’t think I can answer them.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“About the other world. About how I got here. It’s all very complicated, and very...delicate.” 

“I understand,” Harry shrugged. “A man has to have his secrets.” 

Graham blinked. That was easier than he thought it would be. 

“Can I tell you another secret, then?” 

Harry beamed. “Just like old times. We used to tell each other everything!” 

Graham couldn’t help but smile, too. It was true; they’d talked adolescent romances and first shattered hearts, secret midnight confessions of broken rules and stolen beer. Those were the good old days. And even though this was quite different, it didn’t feel so irregular. And so Graham took a deep breath.

“I’m here because I’ve heard there’s time weapons.” 

“Yeah, we’ve got them,” Harry lowered his voice. “But they won’t do us much good. The bloke who had the codes got captured by the Daleks.” 

“I’ve got a mate who might be able to bust him out.” 

Harry laughed. “You really aren’t from around here. Nobody who walks into a Dalek prison ever walks back out. Well, almost nobody. A guy called Rory Williams did. No one really knows how. He walked right on past Daleks trained to shoot on the spot, and they say he never even blinked.” 

Graham felt a pit start to form in his stomach. “That has to be a legend,” he muttered. “Like Tom Hickathrift or Guy of Warwick.” 

“He’s real,” Harry assured. “I used to know him. He used to be a Resistance operative, but when his wife got captured by Dalek agents, raids started happening and insurgency efforts were taking a bad hit. People think she cracked under the pressure of it all, and Williams couldn’t accept that.” 

Graham swallowed hard. “Do you think she did?” 

“Doesn’t matter much what I think,” said Harry. “This is all about politics, Graham. Everything is. If we make an example of Amelia Pond and Rory Williams, people will see that we don’t accept anything less than full loyalty.”

That sounded...Graham wasn’t sure. But he didn’t like it one bit.

“If you ever see a man with a scar on his face,” Harry pulled back a few branches, exposing the facade of an old mining shaft. He pulled a knife out of his pocket and twirled it around in his fingers. “Know that that’s the mark of a traitor.”

You did that, Graham wanted to accuse. You never would’ve done that, when I knew you. But he kept his mouth shut so tightly he could feel his jaw grind. Harry noticed his disdain, and he laughed.

“C’mon, Graham, don’t look so serious.” He tugged three times on a wire leading down into darkness, and something industrial and heavy thundered in the distance. 

“What’s that?” 

“Our ride down,” Harry explained. “Minecarts. The Daleks can’t really fit down here, and the carts are only sent if someone tugs on the wire a certain amount of times. But that amount changes every day, and if someone does it incorrectly, a cart full of explosives is sent up instead of an empty one. They’re timed to detonate right as the cart reaches the mouth of the mine.” 

Graham winced. “That seems awfully brutal. What if someone makes a mistake?” 

“Mistakes are lethal out there. People rarely get the luxury of making them twice.” 

Graham frowned, but followed Harry into the minecart nonetheless. The Harry he’d known had been a boy barely out of school, with a wild grin and a sense of humour like none other. The man standing before him had the same curly hair and the same crooked teeth, but he was a world apart. Literally. He was a stranger. He was a ghost made bitter by senseless hauntings.

A pit began to form in Graham’s stomach, and he found that doubt had replaced the joy he’d felt at the sight of his old friend. Focus, he thought. He had a mission to complete, and there were people counting on him. A whole lot of people, at that.

***

“You’re the spy for the Resistance!?” Seamus cried, trapped behind the glass wall of Ianto’s cell. He and Liam held armfuls of the jumpsuits Ianto and Yaz had discarded in favour of their stolen guard uniforms. 

“Nope,” River said cheerily. “I work for myself.” 

“You won’t get away with this!” Liam insisted. 

“I don’t have to. At least, not for very long.” 

“You can’t just leave them in here,” Ianto told her. “Shoot them!” 

Instinctively, River raised her weapons and lowered the glass barrier long enough to point them squarely between either prisoner’s eyes. This is the part where she would’ve shot them both dead — her first word had been “kill,” she was hardly incapable. But she looked at Liam — really looked at him long and hard and good — and she reckoned that was her first mistake. There were tears in his eyes and sweat on his brow, and when he looked down the barrel of his own stolen gun, River could almost hear his life flashing before his eyes. Every what-if, every never-had-been, every wish and wonder and dream. And she couldn’t do it.

“No one else needs to die,” she spun the weapon artfully and slipped it back into its holster. “Remember this, boys, when it’s time to pick sides. I’m the one who showed you mercy. Do you think the Daleks would’ve hesitated?” 

Maybe part of the Doctor had rubbed off on her after all, or maybe she was just tired of looking down at her hands and seeing blood. 

Ianto was going on and on about how it was dangerous to let them live, how they were evil and deserved, at the very best, a swift death. 

But River wasn’t listening. She fiddled with a panel on the side of the cell, and with a few beeps, it was soundproof; Liam and Seamus shouted less-than-civil things at her, but it was like watching a telly on mute.

“Who is she, exactly?” Ianto asked Yaz, nodding toward River. 

“I don’t really know yet, and I don’t really think that I’m meant to. At least not entirely. She’s called River, but keep that to yourself.” Yaz adjusted the collar of her uniform and tucked her hair up under the helmet. 

“Hm. And who are you?” 

“Yaz,” she offered him her hand to shake, and hesitantly, he did. 

“Ianto. But I suppose you already know that.” 

“Lets go, kids!” River grabbed either of their arms, guiding them along. “Part one of the mission is complete. Part two — find the Watcher.” 

“Uh, the Watcher?” Ianto swallowed hard. He didn’t like the sound of that. “You said you know Jack!?” 

“Oh, yes, he and I go way back! I was an impressionable undergraduate student at Luna University and he was a smooth-talking Time Agent with a surprising amount of abs. Need I say more?” 

“I’d really rather you didn’t,” Ianto groaned. 

“The point is,” Yaz interjected, elbowing River hard in the side. “Jack is our friend, and he told us that you know the codes to the time weapon arsenal the Resistance keeps hidden.” 

“Yeah. That’s the intel the Daleks kept trying to get out of me.” 

“Have you told anyone?” 

Ianto scoffed. “What do you take me for, a coward?” 

“No,” River hissed. “But people say and do things they wouldn’t otherwise say or do when they’re being tortured.” 

“Some people, maybe,” Ianto grumbled.

“Like Amy Pond?” River said before she could stop herself. Ianto’s expression hardened.

“I was brought up to never speak ill of the dead,” he stated coldly. “Did you know her?” 

Yaz gave River with a warning stare, and after a pause, River shook her head.

A silence fell that was laced with a malice Yaz couldn’t place, and so she cleared her throat.

“So, what’s our plan for finding the Watcher?” 

“Can someone please explain to me who that is?” 

“Renegade Time Lord, proper psychopath, and not in the fun way,” River told him. “Mostly, he’s the one responsible for this whole mess.” 

“Ah,” Ianto nodded, exasperated. “Sounds like a lovely chap, and we’re going to go for tea with him, eh?” 

River rolled her eyes. “If I have my way, I’m going to wring his fat neck. He’s being kept here somewhere, he’s—” 

“River!” came Rory’s voice in her ear. “You’ve walked into a trap. You need to find a way out. Now!” 

River paused, her hand frozen in the air halfway between her pocket and the communication device she’d nearly forgotten about. 

“What’s the matter?” Yaz asked. 

“It’s my father. He just told me this is a trap.” 

“What sort of trap!?” 

“I don’t know. But I’m good at getting out of traps. And now, we blend in, thanks to these uniforms.” 

“We blend in until those guards are found and they tell the Daleks what happened! You should’ve killed them, River!” 

“They were children!” she snarled. 

“No, they were Dalek agents.” Ianto’s eyes narrowed. “Your sentimentality might’ve killed us.” 

“We aren’t dead yet,” River activated her comm device — it was strange, the way they were powered by thoughts. It reminded her a bit of the way telepathy felt, and if she’d had the time, she might’ve been made uncomfortable. But time was the one thing she was seriously running low on, and so she promptly replied, “We’ve got it under control. We’ve got Ianto, and now we just have to find the Watcher. Since we’re moving ahead of schedule, do you think you could have my kit fixed any faster?” 

In Jack’s lab, Rory and Ryan shared a worried look, and Ryan quickly resumed his work on the vortex manipulator. Jack had brightened at the sound of Ianto’s name, but there was still a deep-seated worry in his eyes. 

“River, listen to me,” Rory spoke slowly, deliberately. “The Watcher thing is a trap. He might be there, sure, but he’s working with the Daleks or something. They’ve found the TARDIS. Quit while you’re ahead. Find someplace to lay low, and we can probably have the vortex manipulator working soon.” 

River glanced between Yaz and Ianto, and then she thought of the Watcher. She thought of his stupid grin and his stupid laugh, and whatever part of her brain was tasked with thinking rationally suddenly saw red. She wanted revenge. She needed it. For her, this was personal. 

“Fine,” she said. “Yaz — if you can, get Ianto out of here and head back to my father’s. With the uniforms, you should just be able to walk out. And remember the lipstick and the nail polish, just in case.” 

Yaz stared at her blankly. “What about you? We can’t leave you here alone!”

River gestured to both guns strapped to either of her thighs. “I can take care of myself.” 

“River…” Rory warned in her ear. “Don’t be a hero.” 

“I’ll be fine,” she reassured both Rory and Yaz. “Trust me. Get Ianto back to safety. Get some time weapons if you can. I’ll meet you at the rendezvous like we planned.” 

She took her earpiece out and tucked it safely in her pocket, for emergency use only. She couldn’t listen to Rory beg her anymore; if he tried hard enough, he’d convince her to leave, too. 

With a nervous nod, Yaz gave River a quick hug. 

“What is this for?” River’s arms flailed a bit before she found a proper place to put them.

“We might be very different, but you’re still my friend,” Yaz told her, pulling away. “Be careful.” 

Her expression softening, River nodded. “You too.” 

“Let’s go, then,” Ianto shook River’s hand, and followed Yaz out the way they’d come. 

Alone for the first time since arriving, River realised she’d forgotten how cold it felt to be on her own. She startled at the sight of her own shadow, and only then was she aware of how painfully tired she was. When was the last time she’d slept? She couldn’t actually remember. Part of her wanted desperately to return to her father’s shack in the woods and sleep uninterrupted until she awoke. He’d make her coffee, then, like he used to do when she’d visit him and Amy in the real Leadworth. He was a tea drinker himself, but River liked something with more of a kick. Her parents kept a limited supply of dark roast in the pantry for her, and the Doctor kept some stashed away in the TARDIS. No one had ever been that considerate before. 

She shook the thought out of her head and marched on. She didn’t have time for luxuries like coffee or tea or sleep, and she certainly didn’t have the time to miss people who weren’t there. Maybe she wasn’t thinking clearly, but that thought didn’t occur to her; she was focused on the sweet promise of revenge, riding the wave of her current success. She’d fooled a Dalek. She’d fooled the guards. She could sweet talk her way out of Hell and lie her way into Heaven. Exhaustion — emotional and physical — had a funny way of making her feel indestructible.

And she was anything but.

***

Whatever Graham had pictured, he couldn’t have been more incorrect. Maybe he’d just been watching too much telly, or reading too much Phillip K. Dick. He’d sort of envisioned a bunker like Rory’s, with concrete or dirt walls and maybe a few make-shift tables with a few make-shift people sitting around playing a game of poker. But once the minecart had cleared the first part of the track — that is, the part that’s visible from the outside — the mine became hardly recognisable as a ruin and looked almost like the inside of a spaceship. And that, Harry explained, was because it had been.

“We fancy ourselves scavengers,” he said. “Every so often, somebody comes by from another planet with a bone to pick with the Daleks, thinkin’ they can liberate Earth or maybe just conquer it all over again. But you know what the Daleks are like. An almost awesome power. There’s always starcrafts falling from orbit.” 

“And you take bits from them to build up your hideout?” Graham looked around at chrome-cast floor panels and dirt walls patched over with wired control centres and metallic gears. Some had started to rust, but that hardly detracted from the overall future-ness of the Resistance bunker. There were more corridors and caves running off in all directions, making a sort of labyrinth through the mines. Folks sat around with bowls of stew or chunks of meat, clad in armour clearly stolen from whoever had crashed the most recent failed attempt at liberation or conquest. 

A man approached Graham and handed him a meal. Graciously, he accepted. 

“How do you get so much food?” he took a sip of the soup, and was surprised to find that it actually tasted good. Earthy and salty, a bit umami, but decidedly good. 

“We got lucky today,” a Welsh woman said, and Graham turned to face her. “Spacecraft wrecked in the woods, and they were carrying loads of food supplies. What you’re eating now is considered a delicacy on Adrastea.” she held out her hand, and Graham shook it. “I’m Gwen Cooper.” 

“Graham O’Brien,” he introduced. 

“Gwen and I practically run this show. She’s in charge of the radio communication and the planning stuff. I oversee weapons management and deployment,” Harry turned to face Gwen. “And Graham and I go way back.” 

“That’s good to hear,” said Gwen. “We need all the help we can get. Can we trust you, Graham O’Brien?” 

He thought for a moment, just long enough to chew a chunk of meat from the stew, and then nodded.

“We all want the same thing, I reckon. Freedom.” 

“That’s right,” Harry clasped his shoulder. “And to build a stronger world than this one has ever been.” 

“That sounds nice,” agreed Graham. “But a bit idealistic, eh?” 

“You know what they say,” Gwen shrugged. “Aim for the moon and even if you miss, you’ll end up among the stars.”

“Graham told me he’s got a mate that might be able to break Ianto out of the City Centre,” Harry explained with all the cadence of a bad joke. 

Gwen looked up, eyes wide. “Is that so?” 

“C’mon, Gwen, you know it isn’t possible. No one can do that.” 

“If anyone can, it’s my friend,” said Graham. “She’s called Yaz.”

“Graham is from the other world. I know it sounds absurd, but I watched him die. But here he is, eating spaceworm stew a foot away from me. What Jack and the others had said was true.” 

“Spaceworm?” Graham examined the contents of his bowl and felt his stomach lurch.

“I never doubted Jack,” Gwen looked down, pensive. “The only reason he left was because he said he couldn’t bear the thought of giving an order that resulted in loss of life ever again. He was a good man.” she looked up at Graham with hardened eyes. “You reckon you’re a good man, too?” 

Graham shrugged, setting his bowl down on a table. “I try to be.” 

“He says he’s looking for time weapons.” 

“Right then,” Gwen considered this for a breath, and then nodded. “We’ve stashed them in something of an armoury we scavenged from a ship. Only Ianto has the codes, and even if he was here, we wouldn’t give time weapons out to just anyone.” 

“Of course,” Graham smiled politely. “That would be foolish.” 

“If your friend brings back Ianto, then we’ll talk,” she said. “In the meantime, welcome to the Resistance. Donna and Clara remember the other world, too,” she nodded toward two women sitting around a corner, reviewing some sort of schematic. “I suggest you talk to them.” As Graham nodded and turned to walk away, Gwen called out, “Oh, and Graham?” 

He turned back toward her, and she smiled.

“Don’t try anything funny.”


	9. Rage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI I APOLOGISE for the delay in posting this chapter!! I was away for a few days camping in the mountains and I didn't have very much by way of internet. Hope you're all staying healthy and safe!!

River made her way through the prison with a calculated calm. She was tired, and hungry, and frankly, just a bit scared. But that had never stopped her before. 

If she was being honest, she’d expected far more guards. Dalek guards. Not baby-faced teenage boys whose mothers were probably worried sick — rather, killing machines encased in chilled metal tins, with guns for arms and hate for a heart. But there was something sinister about the humanity of the place; a subversion of innocence, a perversion of flesh and bone. It stirred something in her that raised the hairs on the back of her neck.

As she walked along, she was alone — increasingly so. With every step she felt further from everything else, and with every breath, she felt more and more like running. After all, that’s what Rory would have her do, and it was rare she disobeyed her father. He had the tendency to be right about everything. At least, he did in the proper world. He could sense a storm from miles out, and declare beneath a gentle blue sky that they shouldn’t water the plants today; the rain will take care of that later. But she also never left things half-done. She got that sense of finality from her mother. She’d come to find Ianto and the Watcher, and that’s exactly what she planned to do.

A sudden siren made her jump, and she turned in circles looking for its source. It came from everywhere and nowhere, from the walls and from the floor and from the ceiling. But the room — a series of empty cells and long corridors that led to nowhere — stood as still as ever. 

Only then did she realise it was coming from inside her head. The Watcher’s laughter echoed in the walls of her skull, bouncing around like a lottery ball, and she cursed. 

“I know you’re here,” she muttered. “Get the hell out of my head.” 

Behind her, she heard someone clapping. She turned on her heels to find the Watcher standing in the extranceway, a devious smirk on his face.

“Hello, Miss Song,” he said. “I see you’ve cut your hair. It’s symbolic, that. Like Samson, who lost his strength when his dear Delilah betrayed him. Are you Samson, the weak? Or are you Delilah, the traitor?” 

“I’m River, the properly ticked off,” she pointed her weapons at him. “And you’re my prisoner, now.” 

He laughed again, a guttural and awful noise. 

“That’s a good one. Look around you, Miss Song. What do you see?” 

River’s eyes darted about the room, but she said nothing. 

“No guards. No Daleks. No prisoners in the cell. Do you know why?” 

Silence. 

“Because this whole thing is the cell. It’s the illusion of control. I’m not your prisoner, silly girl,” he took a step toward her. “You’re mine.” 

“You did this,” River hissed through grit teeth, her fingers on the triggers of her guns. She swallowed back a rising pit of despair. “This whole world. All for what?” 

“It didn’t go as planned, but I’m nothing if not resourceful,” he shrugged. “I admit I’d underestimated the Doctor’s influence on the universe. I hadn’t accounted for the Daleks. All the people I’ve been recruiting...their timelines were re-written, too. So I found myself alone again. All that work for nothing,” he pouted, theatrical and overblown. “But with the Doctor safely in a bubble universe, Gallifrey was never destroyed, and my family was able to escape before the Daleks won. And speaking of those pesky buggers — the Daleks offered me an ultimatum; if I could deliver you to them — River Song, the wife of the Doctor, the daughter of Amelia and Rory, the one who history has been watching — they’ll let me go free.” 

River scoffed. “You’re even more of an idiot than I’d thought if you actually believe they’ll keep their word.” She thought of Rory, and of Yaz, and Ryan, and Graham, and her chest ached with guilt. Rory had been right. He’d warned her. And she hadn’t listened. 

She had no idea that her thoughts had activated the comm in her pocket — and everyone was listening. 

“Look at you,” he clicked his teeth, feigning pity. “You say you think me a fool, but your thoughts betray you. Just like you betrayed him.” 

“Shut up,” River snarled. 

“No,” he insisted. “You forget that I didn’t do this. We did this.” 

“I didn’t help you.” 

“You gave me the key.” 

“I didn’t have a choice!” 

He smiled. “There’s always a choice. Didn’t your dear old daddy tell you that? I see if in your mind. I also see that he doesn’t know you told me the Doctor’s name. None of your little friends do. But you do. You know that you betrayed your beloved. You betrayed everyone who ever loved you, because you’re weak.” 

“You think I don’t know that!?” River shouted. “I hate myself more with every passing second because of what I’ve done — because of what you made me do — and I have spent every one of those seconds trying to make it right.”

“But it’s not good enough, is it? Because you see those people suffering and you blame yourself.” 

“I blame the both of us,” she corrected. “The difference is that I’m taking accountability for my actions and trying to fix things.” 

“But you’re only doing it to clear your conscience. So self-serving.” 

“No,” she hissed. “I’m doing it because it’s the right thing to do. It’s what he would do. The Doctor, I mean.” 

“Right is subjective, and the Doctor isn’t here.” 

“Where is he!?” River surprised herself with the urgency in her voice, the blind rage, the shrill desperation. She cocked her gun. When she spoke again, her voice was laced with a rather undignified vibrato. “You’re going to tell me.”

The Watcher laughed, unimpressed. “No, I don’t think I will.”

“Enough,” said a Dalek, wheeling itself into the room. “This conversation has no point. We will take the prisoners.” 

A few more filtered in behind it, their guns trained on River. 

“You will drop your weapons.” 

River was no fool. She knew she was no match for half a dozen Daleks. With a sigh, she put her guns on the floor. A second Dalek turned toward the Watcher and commanded him to do the same. 

“What?” he gasped out in disbelief. “I brought you the girl! I held up my end of the bargain!” 

“I told you, you idiot!” River laughed, bitter and frantic. “They’re Daleks. They don’t make deals. They break them.” 

“Silence!” droned the leader of the fleet. “Escort prisoners to their cell and hold them for interrogation.” 

“I obey,” replied another, poking at River with its suction arm and jostling her along. Behind them, another Dalek was doing the same to the Watcher. 

“You bastards!” he cried. “You lying little rodents! I ought to break your casing wide open and slurp you up like escargot!” 

“Give it a rest,” River groaned. “Your family is safe, aren’t they? Isn’t that enough?” 

“No!” the Watcher barked. “What good is their safety if I can’t ever see them again?” 

“And you called me self-serving!” River scoffed in disbelief. “I knew Time Lords were absurd, but I—” 

Ahead of them, the pair of young officers she’d imprisoned were approaching. They paused in front of River, and one reached for the zipper of her jumpsuit. 

“Don’t get frisky,” she warned. “Ianto was right. I should’ve killed you brats.” 

“I don’t care much for women in that way, ma’am,” said Seamus, ripping off her bio dampener. River let out a sharp, pained hiss. 

"I read two heartbeats," a bright blue Dalek scanned her. "She is the Proto-Time Lord River Song."

"That's not all I am," she warned.

In one swift movement, River did an expert jump-kick, the heel of her boot whacking Seamus right where it counts. He fell backward into Liam, and the pair toppled into a Dalek, knocking it to the ground. One of its misplaced blasts struck another right in the eyestalk.

“I cannot see!” it cried. “I cannot see!” 

Others shot at her, but she ducked out of the way just in time, sliding on her knees to retrieve her discarded guns. One of the Dalek’s blasts struck the balcony overhead, and with a mighty, metallic wail, it topped down. The rubble buried her remaining captors in a pile of rusted, burnt-up steel, but as she turned to aim her gun at the Watcher, something struck her in the back. Hard.

A new platoon of officers had entered to investigate the commotion, and one had shot from a harpoon-like phaser a thin rope of pure electricity. It wrapped itself around River and shocked her, and shocked her, and shocked her. Every time she dared to move a limb, blink an eye, breathe too deeply, it felt like every atom in her body was being set on fire, over and over again.

She fell to the ground with a scream cut off by the rag stuffed violently into her mouth. It was coated in something that burnt her throat and tasted bitter on her tongue, and before she could put together enough of a thought to realise she was screwed, she felt herself drifting off into a merciless drugged sleep. 

For a moment, it felt as if she was back in the vortex with a malfunctioning piece of kit burning her wrist. She was traveling at the speed of light, falling so fast that not even the darkness could keep up. Everything that she’d forgotten about that terrible journey came back to her in startling clarity; the pain — agonising pain — and the sense of finality. And, it seemed, her contentment with it. Death was not threatening her, it was promising her; promising her rest, promising her freedom, promising her some goddamn peace and quiet. And she hadn’t feared it then. But now, she was terrified. She heard herself saying their agreed upon safeword — the word that meant there was no hope — over and over again to anyone who would listen. 

And the last thing she saw before her eyes drifted shut was the dilated camera-pupil of a bright red Dalek standing proudly over her.

***

A hush had fallen over Jack’s lab. They’d all heard it. They’d heard River’s coerced confession, a secret she’d been keeping from them all. And they’d heard her code word uttered over and over again in between pained screams and sobs she didn’t seem to be aware of. They’d heard it all. 

“Back to work,” said Rory, sitting down at a desk and beginning to scribble out a letter.

“What are you writing?” Jack asked.

“Mind your own. Keep working on the vortex manipulator.” 

“Does this mean she’s dead?” Ryan’s eyes had gone glossy. “Yaz too, then?” 

“I’m here, I’m alright,” said Yaz in his ear, sounding stunned. “I have Ianto.” 

Ryan perked up. “Yaz has—” 

“We all heard, Ryan,” Jack put a hand on his shoulder, redirecting his attention to his work. “That’s great news.” 

But there was a sadness in his voice, a sharp edge to the joy he should’ve felt that their plan was inches closer to working. But River…

He turned to face Rory, eagerly writing. 

“Hey,” Jack stood behind his chair. “What are you—” 

“A letter for River. I’ll give it to her when I go rescue her. I might not get the chance to tell her these things in person.” 

Jack paled. “Rory, she said—” 

“I don’t care what she said,” Rory folded up the letter and tucked it into the pocket of his jumpsuit. “She’s my daughter, and she’s in trouble. The Daleks said to take them to interrogation. That means they haven’t killed her yet.” He turned his attention to Ryan. “How much longer on the vortex manipulator?” 

“It’s coming along,” said Ryan, unsure. “But it’s sort of hard to tell.” 

Jack took a look, and made a vague sound of approval.

“You’re a fast worker, Ryan, I’ll give you that,” he praised. “But Rory...listen to yourself. You against a dozen Daleks. Who would win?” 

Rory stood up and smoothed out the wrinkles in his clothes. “I have something the Daleks haven’t got.” 

“What?” cried Jack. “Insanity!? A death wish!?” 

“Rage,” Rory replied, and a silence fell so densely Jack nearly forgot how to breathe. “Let me know when the vortex manipulator is ready.” 

He strolled outside without another word, and Jack and Ryan shared a common glance. The Dalek's might've been powered by hate, but rage was something different. Hate burned, but rage went supernova. Jack swallowed hard and cleared his throat. There was no talking Rory down off this particular ledge. 

***

“Of all the bloody things to lie about!” Yaz kicked a rock and did her best to ignore the twinge in her toe. “I can’t believe she never told us any of this. She didn’t trust us!” 

“You can’t trust anyone,” Ianto said dispassionately.

“You don’t understand,” hissed Yaz. “She said we could trust her, but she didn't trust us enough to let us know that something had happened to her. That she’d been forced into helping the same guy we’ve been hunting.”

“No one is obligated to share the details of their traumas, Yaz,” Ianto reminded her. “You gotta pick your battles. Listen, I know it’s wrong that she didn’t tell you the whole story, but I mean...did it matter, really?”

“I guess not,” grumbled Yaz, letting out a breath and some of her anger with it. “I reckon she was scared. That’s all. She was scared we’d turn on her if we knew.” She remembered, then, what her mother had once said about anger, and realised she hadn’t ever been angry at all. She was sad. And scared, too. But mostly sad. Because whatever they’d heard in their earpieces did not bode well for River Song.

“And are we?” 

Yaz shook her head. “She sacrificed herself. She might be dead, for all we know. Or badly hurt. She needs us now more than ever.” 

Reluctantly, Ianto nodded. “What can we do?” 

“We could speed up the process if you give me the codes to the time weapons locker. I could transmit them back to my friend using this earpiece, and—” 

“If I didn’t tell Jack or the rest of the Resistance — who are, essentially, my family — what makes you think I’d tell you?” 

“Because we need to get those weapons if we want to fix the world! And we need to do it soon, because River’s in trouble!” 

“We’ll get them when we arrive at the Resistance’s hideout in a few hours.” 

“We might be too late!” 

“It’s a _time_ weapon.”

What would River Song do? 

Yaz, lagging behind, began applying lipstick. 

“C’mon," sighed Ianto. "I understand that you’re just trying to—” 

Yaz grabbed him by the collar and pulled him in close.

“Sorry about this. But I need you to tell me those codes ASAP.”

And she kissed him.

By the time she pulled away, there was a smear of red across Ianto’s lips, and he looked a bit dazed. 

“Are you alright?” she asked him.

He blinked. “I’ve got to give Queen Victoria back her casserole dish.” 

Yaz grinned. “Excellent. I just need you to answer a question for me first.” 

***

“I remember it all so vividly,” said Clara Oswald, hands crossed neatly on the table in front of her. She swept a strand of brown fringe out of her eyes and tucked it behind her ear. “Some people say the proper world felt like a dream they’d woken up from. But to me, it’s this that feels like the dream.” 

“I keep pinching myself, thinking I might wake up,” agreed Donna Noble. “If I hadn’t found the Resistance, I don’t know where I would’ve gone. My home doesn’t exist anymore. Bulldozed right over Chiswick to build factories.” 

“Blackpool, too,” Clara added. “It’s all factories and labour camps. No more beaches, no more theme parks, no more people.” 

Graham made a sympathetic noise, doing his best not to think about what he’d heard in his ear. He’d never thought of River as someone capable of being a victim. She was strong and domineering and fearless and bold. But the bigger they are, he thought, the harder they fall. And River Song had fallen. He only hoped her landing would be softened by mercy. But knowing the Daleks, he wasn’t holding his breath.

“We’ve learned that a lot of us who remember have a common link,” Donna said. “The Doctor. We know him. We’ve traveled with him. We're all temporal anomalies.” 

Clara nodded. “We think that somewhere, he’s out there, waiting for us to save him. I knew him, Donna knew him, and there’s others here who knew him, too.”

“The Doctor,” Graham repeated. “I know her in the future, I reckon. She’s a she, now.” 

Donna laughed. “Now that’s something I’d love to see!”

Graham leaned in close, looking serious. “Is your loyalty to the Doctor or to the Resistance?” 

Clara and Donna shared a curious look. 

“Are they not the same thing?” Clara asked him. “The Doctor would want us to fight.” 

“Yes, of course," he lowered his voice. "But I’ve got a friend who knows the Doctor very, very well, but who the Resistance wouldn’t be too keen on having around. But you see, I think she’s in trouble.”

"The Doctor?" 

"My friend," he elaborated. "But the Doctor, too."

Donna shifted uncomfortably. “Any friend of the Doctor would be welcome here.” 

“Amelia Pond?” Graham let the name fester in the air, and Donna took a deep breath.

“None of us really think she turned. Except for Harry and Gwen, of course,” she glanced up to make sure no one else was listening. “Harry fancied Amy. But Amy was with this bloke called Rory. Harry propositioned her a few times, and after she kept turning him down, he started to get angry. And when she died, everyone would’ve thought she was a hero, and Harry couldn’t stand the idea of it.”

“He started the rumour that she’d given up information,” Graham spoke slowly, in disbelief. “Just because he was angry she wouldn’t put out?” 

“There were slivers of fact in his allegations,” Clara explained. “Someone did give the Daleks intel. But there’s no proof that it was Amy. We had a dozen operatives get captured that day.”

“Rory left because he didn’t want to be in charge of an organisation that blamed his late wife for what he called ‘bureaucratic failings,’ and I can’t say I blame him,” Donna went on. “Besides, with Amy and Rory gone, Harry was next in line to take over as leader. If there’s one thing he loves more than women, its power.” 

“What a dog,” Graham shook his head. That didn’t sound like the Harry he knew at all. His Harry marched alongside his sisters for women’s liberation, and it hadn’t been just for show. “What about Gwen?” 

“She keeps to herself, for the most part,” Clara said. “She was good friends with someone called Jack, but Jack left with Rory because he also didn’t believe Amy would sell us out.” 

“Most of us are here because it beats being alone, and even if we wanted to leave, Harry would say we knew too much. In a way, it’s just like another prison,” Donna sighed. “Tell us more about your friend. The one who knows the Doctor.” 

Graham spoke in hushed tones. “Her name is River Song, and—” 

“River Song!?” Clara and Donna chorused. 

“Hush!” hissed Graham. “I told you, she’s wouldn’t be welcome here.”

“I met her!” Donna whispered excitedly, but after a beat, her face fell. “She died for him — the Doctor — to save everyone. To save me,” she paused, thoughtful. “It was a long time ago, but she mentioned being from his future.” 

“That’s the tricky bit about time travel,” Clara sighed. “When I knew her, she was some sort of...computer program, or ghost, or something.” 

Graham almost laughed out of sheer disbelief. It seemed like everyone in the world knew River. Not only that — everyone seemed to have a story about her saving someone, somewhere. And everyone seemed to love her. At least a little bit. 

“I know her, too. She’s here. She’s alive. She says she thinks the Doctor is being held outside of time, in some sort of bubble universe, because there’s a guy called the Watcher who hates him and it’s really quite complicated,” Graham took a breath. “But I think she’s in trouble with the Daleks.” Time for a little white lie. “I came here to find someone to help me.”

“Yeah,” Clara glanced at Donna without a second thought. “We’re game.”

“I heard that folks around here would want her dead,” Graham blurted. “Because she’s the daughter of two defectors.”

“Like I said,” Donna muttered. “Only the folks high up think Amy and Rory are traitors. The rest of us think the heart of this organisation died with Pond.”

Clara nodded in agreement. “What can we do to help River?” 

“Graham!” Yaz’s voice came in on the comm. “I have the codes to the time weapons locker, courtesy Ianto Jones. X-1-2-V-9, then turn the dial to the right twice, and the left twice again. It should open.” 

Graham never had had the best poker face; he wore his emotions on his sleeve. Clara let out a nervous laugh.

“Are you alright?” 

“You asked how you could help,” Graham cleared his throat. “Do you know where the time weapons are kept?” 

“No,” Clara crossed her arms, looking unsure. Graham’s face fell, but Clara took a breath to show she wasn’t finished. “But we know people who do. Rose and Grace work directly with Harry in weapons management, and every girl in here has a reason to hate him.” 

What little colour had been left in Graham’s cheeks had promptly drained, and he found that his mouth was cotton-dry. 

“Wait,” his voice was barely louder than a whisper. “Did you say Grace?”


	10. Death of a Salesman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello i apologise in advance for the angsty-ness of this chapter lol...this author has no regrets.

River opened her eyes with a groan. She felt like she’d been hit by a bus. No — she’d been hit by a bus before, on a planet whose inhabitants all sort of looked like busses. This felt worse. 

“Don’t worry,” said a voice beside her. “I got the rope off of you. You can move now. I couldn’t do anything about the burns, though, so you’ll just have to deal with that.” 

Hesitantly, she sat up. There were electrical burns on her arms and torso; she could feel them stinging beneath her clothes. Her head was spinning and just about everything ached, but that was good, she thought. It meant she was alive. 

She looked over to see the Watcher sitting beside her. That, she thought, was not so good. It meant _he_ was alive, and that didn’t do the universe any favours.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said with a wry laugh. “The electric rope would’ve eventually honed in on every movement, not just the big ones, and every time your heart beat, it would’ve been zap! Zap! Zap! Until you were dead. But I didn’t let you die, so maybe I’m not such a bad person after all.” 

“No, I’m not thinking that at all,” River corrected, her voice a bit scratchy. “I’m thinking that we’re both in a Dalek prison cell because you thought you were smarter than the most calculating and violent civilisation in the universe.”

“I am smarter than the Time Lords,” he flashed her a grin. Her eyes narrowed into a glare.

“You know what I meant.” 

“Yeah,” he sighed, his smile slipping away. “The truth is that I saved you because I didn’t want to be imprisoned alone. Misery needs company, and all that.” 

“You should’ve let me die,” she scrubbed at her eyes, trying to shake the grogginess from her head. “How long have I been out?” 

“A few hours. I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. They don’t put clocks in these cells, and they’ve got something blocking telepathy.” 

Sure enough, River tried to reach out with her mind — to feel her connection to the Doctor, however distant — but she felt nothing, for the very first time. It was like someone had stuck a shot of lidocaine in her mind. She’d never hated a feeling more.

“What do you gain from this?” she hissed. “From any of this? You told me you were angry that you lost your family. Fine. I can understand that. But then, your family was safe, and that wasn’t enough.”

The Watcher seemed tired. Whatever budding evil he had in him was worn out and sleeping. It would wake up again — evil always did — but in the meantime, it was dormant, and he was just an average idiot in a cell. 

“No,” he said sadly. “Because I was still alone.” 

“Everyone’s alone,” River inspected the cell door holding them in. It was glass, but not the kind that could be broken. It was reinforced with a force-field on either end, and not even a Dalek’s blast would be enough to break it. “Even when people are together, they’re still all alone.”

“That’s not good enough.” 

“It has to be,” she turned to face him, glaring with a hatred so hot it could’ve melted steel. “Don’t you ever think of the world beyond your own? You feel terrible and sad because you’re alone. And now, because of you, thousands of other people feel that way, too. You haven’t won. You haven’t risen above anything. You just brought the rest of the universe down to rock bottom with you.”

“Like I said,” he shrugged. “Misery needs company.” 

“You’re a monster.” 

“Wrong,” he dismissed. “I’m a psychopath.” 

“No, _I’m_ a psychopath. You’re just a jerk.” 

“Regardless, we’re both trapped.” 

“Yeah,” River sat down with a wince. “We’re both going to die anyway. You might as well tell me where the Doctor is.” 

“I would if I could,” he laid back, staring at the ceiling. “But I don’t know where people go when you shoot them with a de-mat gun.” 

“A de-mat gun,” River’s eyes went wide. “That explains it all perfectly. Scan his timeline, find every particle that’s ever interacted with him, and rebuild it. He’s made out of molecules that the universe doesn’t remember, but he’s out there, a naked soul.”

“The Doctor had used a modified version to remove Gallifrey from time during the Time War,” he said bitterly. “It seemed almost poetic that he ought to meet his end the same way.”

“There’s nothing poetic about destruction,” River growled. 

“Isn’t there?” the Watcher sat up and scooted closer to her. “Tell me there’s nothing beautiful about a supernova. Tell me there’s nothing lovely about fire. Tell me there’s nothing sacred about power. Tell me you’ve never stood in the wake of your own destruction and thought, ‘Blimey. I did this.’ ” 

“I have done, but not out of pride,” River’s voice trembled. “I’ve stood in this world, Watcher, and I thought, ‘I did this,’ but I thought it with horror. With fear. With shame. I did this, and you made me. And I hate you for that.” 

“I don’t care.” 

River lunged toward him, grabbing the collar of his shirt and forcing him up against the wall. Every breath hurt, but she didn’t care. This was her rage. This was her vindication. She punched him once in the nose, and he bled. She punched him again in the mouth, and he bled. With a smear of crimson on his chin, he smiled, and River hit him again, and again, and again — he laughed.

“It isn’t funny!” River cried, red-hot tears welling up in her eyes. She cried when she was angry and got angry when she ought to cry — her whole world was back-to-front, in a way. “You’re nothing. Without your precious telepathy, you’re just a sad, small, pathetic man. Without my telepathy, do you know what I am?” She struck him again. “I’m the girl that beat you up.”

He spat out a wad of blood. There might’ve been a tooth in it, but River didn’t look long enough to notice. 

“It’s funny, because you need a reason don’t you? An answer to the shortest question — why?” he hummed pleasantly, unaffected by his wounds. “And I don’t have one. I wanted to watch the Doctor’s precious world burn, and so I burnt it. And there was nothing he — or you — could do about it. What would he say if he saw you now? All feral, attacking like a wild animal stuck in a beartrap.”

River recoiled, staring at the blood on her own knuckles with a dread she couldn’t quite place. It turned out he didn’t need telepathy to manipulate her into doing things she wasn’t proud of.

Somewhere nearby, a door opened with the grating grind of metal on metal, and a Dalek arrived outside of the cell. It was flanked by a pair of armed officers in fresh uniforms. River recognised them immediately as Liam and Seamus. 

“Take the Time Lord for interrogation,” commanded the Dalek. Seamus stepped forward once the glass gate sunk down and snatched the Watcher up from the cell with surprising strength.

“No need to be so rough,” he shrugged himself free from his grasp. “I’ll go with a shred of dignity.” 

“Until they drill into your bones with a laser,” River smirked at the way his brow twitched. “Then, you’ll be screaming like a banshee.” 

“Whatever they do to me,” the Watcher reminded her. “You’re next.” 

The glass barrier lowered once again, and River laid down on her side, knees at her chest. She needed to think. No one was coming for her; she’d said their code word — at least, she thought she did. She might’ve said it in a dream, or in a world somewhere far away, where things were alright. But she deeply doubted it. Yes, no one would be coming for her. And as she saw it, that was okay. They’d keep on keeping on, and maybe one day, they’d fix the world, and she’d wake up in bed and realise it was all just a terrible nightmare like every terrible nightmare that had come before. 

She didn’t believe that there was an afterlife — a present-life was more than enough, thank you very much — but for a moment, she let herself think that when the Daleks did kill her, her mum would be waiting there, sheathed in some ethereal light and saying, “Melody, what trouble have you gotten yourself into now?” 

Yes, that was a nice thought. A tender lie. But for a moment, she let herself believe it, and she smiled.

***  
“Impressive work,” said Jack, assisting Ryan with a few final touches before holding up the vortex manipulator and inspecting it in the light. “That ought to get the job done.” 

Ryan, despite the pride he felt deep down, thought it wouldn’t have felt right to smile. “We aren’t going to give it to Rory, though. Are we?” 

Jack sighed, looking briefly toward the window. Outside, Rory was standing in the light of the sunset, wondering if it might be the last one he’ll ever see. 

“She’s his kid,” Jack sat down. “Nothing in the universe could stop a father from saving his kid, if he really believes there’s a chance he might succeed.” 

“Are you a dad?”

A distant memory. A girl called Alice. A boy called Steven. Blonde hair, dungarees. 

A mistake. No — a sacrifice. What was it River had said? Love was knowing when to save and when to sacrifice. Jack had done both that day. And he didn’t think about it. At least, he hadn’t thought about it. Until now. Ryan handed him a tissue, and only then did Jack realise his eyes were damp. 

“I’m sorry,” said Ryan. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

“Nah, don’t be stupid,” Jack, ignoring the tissue, wiped his snotty nose on his sleeve. “It’s fine. It’s totally, totally fine.”

The screen door clattered shut; Ryan and Jack turned to face Rory.

“Is it ready yet?” he asked coldly. 

“Yeah, but Rory, hear me out,” Jack began carefully, calmly. “Let me go. If I get shot, I won’t die. Hell, they could shoot me over and over again and I’ll just keep getting up! That’ll surprise ‘em!” 

Ryan had learned his lesson on asking personal questions, but there was one he really, really wanted to ask. 

Rory shook his head. “I couldn’t save Amy, Jack. But I can save River.” 

“This can’t be about clearing your conscience!” 

“It isn’t,” Rory insisted. “It’s about helping my daughter.”

“You don’t even know if she’s alive!” 

“I do know.” 

“How!?” 

“I just know.” 

“Think about this rationally!” Jack cried. “Why don’t we just talk about it?” 

With a sigh, Rory nodded. “Fine. Let’s talk about it outside, though. I thought I heard something and I want to keep watch.” 

“Right, then,” Ryan didn’t have to be told twice. He took a step toward the door, and after a moment’s hesitation, Jack followed him. 

“You coming?”

“I’ll be out in a minute,” Rory replied. “I’ve got to use the loo.” 

“Great,” Jack rolled his eyes. “That’s charming.” 

“Everybody does it!” 

Outside was still and tranquil in the orange glow of sundown. Times like these made it easy to forget that the world was so, so broken. Ryan imagined what it would all look like if you took away the sharp curves of distant buildings and the smoky gloss of factory steam and just let the trees be trees beneath the sky. He imagined it would be peaceful. And quiet. And good. There was an innate goodness to nature. He didn’t really like dirt or bugs and he’d much rather spend his time inside playing video games or watching other people play video games on YouTube, but that, he reckoned, was a problem with him. Not with nature.

“It’s nice,” he said. Jack looked at him like he was mad.

“What the hell is nice about literally anything?” 

“The sun, I mean,” Ryan insisted. “It’s all orange and stuff. A little bit pink, too.” 

“Yeah,” Jack groaned. “It does that every night.” 

“Even when the world is bad,” Ryan smiled up at him. “The sun still sets.” 

“Go write a poem, Ryan,” Jack dismissed. “We have to talk Rory out of making himself into a martyr.” 

Gears were turning in Ryan’s head. There was something he should’ve noticed, he thought, but he was never very quick with that stuff. He thought, and thought, and thought, and finally, he said, “You grabbed the vortex manipulator, right?” 

Jack glanced at him. “Hm?” 

“Rory was talking about wanting to take it and all, and it was just sitting there, and we left him alone inside,” Ryan was sure he was overreacting. At least, he hoped he was. “It’s like the time my mate Benny was trying to quit smoking; he’d say he had to use the loo, and just go smoke a cigarette on the toilet. Eventually, I learned that I had to pocket the cigarettes myself, or else Benny would just nick them, and—” 

“Shit!” Jack exclaimed, wide-eyed and frantic. He rushed back inside with Ryan in tow, just in time to see Rory vanish in a puff of dust. 

***

Rory had always wanted to be a father. Granted, he really didn’t get the chance. At least not in the proper way. He wasn’t there for River’s first words, or her first steps. He wasn’t there to take the training wheels off of her bicycle and watch her ride free for the very first time. He wasn’t there to buy her ice cream when she had her heart broken. There were no parent-teacher conferences, and there was no father-daughter dance at her wedding. 

He didn’t even remember her. But Amy did. And he’d read the pages in Amy’s journal over and over again, like he was catching brief glances into someone else’s life. His child. Their child. Made of fire and chaos and life. He’d loved her before he’d ever known her. Parenthood was funny that way.

The vortex manipulator had been tuned into her biosigns; whatever dampener she was using must’ve malfunctioned, he figured, because the kit had found her in seconds. Rory affixed it to his wrist and took a deep breath. 

“Showtime.” 

He held his breath and hit the button, hoping that this whole space travel thing wouldn’t hurt. 

Next he knew, he was standing in a prison cell, and it hadn’t hurt at all. In fact, it was almost anticlimactic.

River rose quickly from her seat, stunned. With bruises on her cheeks and her choppy hair sticky with blood and sweat, she looked like hell. It sent a pang through Rory’s chest like an icy dagger — a pang he quickly identified as a bitter concoction of rage and sorrow — but he swallowed it down. 

“What are you doing here!?” River whispered, eyes flitting between him and the door to her cell.

He pressed his index finger to his lips and hushed her, unbuckling the vortex manipulator from his wrist. He held it out to her. 

“I brought you this. And,” he rummaged through his pockets for the letter and the locket. “These.” 

“I don’t understand.” She held the items in her hand, still as a statue. 

“The vortex manipulator still needs a little bit of time to recharge. It’s only just been fixed,” he told her. From his pocket he also drew a handkerchief, dabbing gently at a cut on River’s brow. “Have they hurt you?” 

River winced at his touch. “I’m fine. You need to get out of here, Father. The Daleks will be back soon with the Watcher — they took him for questioning, and—” 

He hushed her gently again. He was probably the only person in the universe who could get away with that. 

“Listen carefully, River,” he soothed. “A few things. First: your comm was on when you were talking to the Watcher, and we heard—” 

River paled. “I can explain. I—.” 

“You don’t have to explain anything,” He reassured her with a tenderness he wouldn’t have thought himself capable of. “When you go back to Jack’s — the coordinates are already punched in; all you have to do is hit the button — the others might ask you questions. They might be angry. I don’t know. But don’t you falter, River, because no person on this Earth is entirely blameless all the time.” 

Tears welled up in her eyes, but she stubbornly refused to let them fall. She refused to acknowledge the faint tremble in her lip, the ache in her bones. As long as she didn’t pay attention to any of it, it wasn’t real. That was the mindset that had carried her this far.

“He was in my head,” she said cooly, but her eyes told a tormented and sad story instead. “He took the information he needed and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.” Her voice shook with rage. “I was weak!” 

“You aren’t weak,” Rory told her firmly, grasping her arm for emphasis. “You’re brave, and you’re determined, and most of all, you’re your mother’s daughter. Amelia Pond was a fighter with a heart of gold. She made decisions, and she took risks. She did what she had to do. Sometimes, her actions had consequences that she didn’t intend. Sometimes, she blamed herself for things when she wasn’t to blame. And I’m going to tell you right now what I told her time and time again,” Rory waited for her to look up at him before he went on. 

“We’ve all done bad things. Terrible things. Things that we aren’t sure if we can ever forgive ourselves for doing at all. And if we’re at all capable of empathy, we feel guilty. But we have to hold onto that guilt and let it drive us to do better, to make reparations when possible, or else it takes hold of us, and we’re goners,” Rory gave her arm a reassuring squeeze. “We have to be accountable for our sins, River. But with that being said, we don’t have to take on someone else’s. You didn’t tell the Watcher the Doctor’s name. He stole it from you. He took it by force. You’re not an accomplice in his conquest, River, you’re a victim of it.” 

“I should’ve been strong enough to resist it!” 

“That’s rubbish.”

River looked away. “And clever enough to know better than to go around using telepathy before I properly knew how.” 

“Fine, fine, maybe you should’ve been more responsible with your gift. But that doesn’t give anyone the right to take advantage of it. Of you,” Rory took a breath, choosing his words with precision and care. “In what way does exploring your own mental powers give someone else the right to barge in and use them against you?” 

River was silent. When he put it like that, it almost made sense. 

“Now, you’re going to have to be brave one more time,” Rory told her. 

Her chest ached with the emotion she held in, and her throat was tight with an impending grief she couldn’t seem to shake. It was everything — the guilt — and she didn’t know how to stop it eating her. She’d let the Doctor down. He’d told her he loved her and she hadn’t said it back. She should’ve said it back. She missed her mother. She was worried about Yaz, and Ryan, and Graham, and Jack, and Rory. 

Rory. 

She looked at her father with wide, wet eyes, and in one swift, unpracticed movement, she hugged him. Her head fell against his shoulder, and she let herself feel safe, if only for a moment. 

Her father — from the proper timeline — always hugged her before she left after one of her visits. But this Rory didn’t seem to know what to do. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d hugged someone at all. His hands fidgeted for a moment before finding their way around her, and once they did, he felt a lifetime’s worth of what-ifs and almosts hit him like a tsunami. What if he’d been able to be a proper father? He almost felt happy. He might’ve, if he hadn’t felt so sad.

“Why is it always me, eh?” River muttered tiredly, brokenly, desperately, letting her guard down just long enough to feel a single rogue tear roll down her cheek. She wiped it away on the back of her sleeve. “Why can’t it be someone else just this once?”

Rory hugged her tightly, his eyes drifting shut as his cheek fell against her hair. “Because there’s no one else like you in the universe.” 

“It isn’t quite fair.” 

“No,” Rory bit back tears of his own. “It isn’t.” 

Footfalls came in from the hall, and River pulled away. 

“We have to get out of here!” she said, making an attempt to strap the vortex manipulator back onto Rory’s wrist. He yanked his hands away.

“It isn’t done charging yet, and even once it’s finished, it won’t be strong enough to transport two of us.” 

For the first time, River realised that Rory had never had an intention of going back. Stunned, she shook her head.

“No. No, Father, you’re not—” 

“We don’t have much time, River. Remember what Jack said earlier. No death is forever in this world.” 

“I don’t care!” River was starting to panic. “I’m not going to leave you here to die!” 

He closed her fingers around the amulet. “When you gave me that, you told me it ought to give me hope. Inspire me to keep fighting for the people that matter to me. And that’s what I’m doing now. And that’s what I’m telling you to do.” 

“No!” River insisted. “There has to be a way! You...you go back to Jack’s, please, and—” 

“River,” he warned in a tone he’d never used before, but reckoned the other version of him had probably reserved for scolding his wild, stubborn children. “Listen to your Father.” 

And that’s the moment everything changed. 

The Daleks rounded the corner, and they recognised him on sight; Rory Williams. Resistance operative. Rebel. Fool. Two Daleks. Two humans. Four guns trained on one man, holding up two hands in surrender. He shut his eyes. He felt the bitter warmth of energy pulses roaring toward him — and then he felt someone tackling him to the ground, knocking him out of the way right in the nick of time. A ray of red-hot light singed the hair of his beard.

“River!” He cried. “What are you doing!” 

She’d managed to disarm both of the human agents and dodge a handful of Dalek blasts in the three seconds it took Rory to remember how to breathe. 

“I’m no damsel in distress!” she tossed him a gun. “We fight together!” 

It was Rory’s turn to panic, now.

“Don’t you dare, River. Go back to Jack’s!” 

“Not without you!” she fired a shot and struck the first Dalek right in the eye stalk. It doubled back, spinning out of control, and when it struck the second Dalek, a wave of sparks danced outward from the metallic grind. One Dalek sprung a chemical coolant leak, and the silvery-blue vapor ignited; the blast was strong enough to knock River and Rory off their feet. 

“C’mon!” River scrambled up, grabbing Rory’s arm and pulling him along, past two fried, smoking, dead Daleks. “More will be on the way!” 

Of course, River was right. Sometimes, she really hated being right! She groaned at the sight of a Dalek fleet rolling into the room, their smoky shadows cast in flickering firelight. They were flanked by soldiers in full battle gear. Blasts and bullets were soaring past them, narrowly missing their heads. River pulled the trigger on her own stolen weapon and cursed; it was out of juice. 

Rory had sized up the situation and determined there was only one course of action. He hated to do it. He hated that he’d be another trauma on River’s long list of aches and pains. But at least she’d live to see the next sunrise. He hoped it would be a good one.

He turned and snapped the vortex manipulator around River’s wrist in a swift and fluid motion. Just on time, its red flickering light turned a solid and steady green. It was recharged. It was ready. 

“This is where I’d tell you to be a good girl, but I know you wouldn’t listen,” Rory spoke so quickly it felt like his words were racing each other, stumbling over twisted ankles and scraped-up knees. “So, River, I’m telling you to be brave. Braver than you’ve ever been before. Brave enough to admit that you can’t go it alone, that you’re frightened, that you’re sad. Brave enough to forgive me for this.”

And despite her pleas and struggle, Rory pressed the button on the device he’d secured to her wrist — at the exact moment a Dalek’s blast struck him square in the back. 

As the vortex opened up its mouth and River felt it pull her in, she saw Rory Williams slump forward like a ragdoll or a crash-test dummy — lifeless, shattered, murdered, gone.

When she materialised in Jack’s lab, there was the ghost of a cry at her lips — a cry that she’d screamed into the vortex, that echoed against the tinny cave walls of time itself. 

“Hey,” Jack rushed forward to catch her as her knees buckled, but she smacked him away, pulling herself right back up. 

The first thing Ryan noticed is that she looked like she’d been caught with her hand in some sort of cosmic cookie jar — guilt, defeat, rage, grief in all its stages...he knew loss, and he knew what it looked like, and he was looking at it. Loss was bitter and gnarled and twisted and swollen, with bloody knuckles and bruised cheeks and a look about it that made feral seem too faint a word. She didn’t have to say anything. He knew that Rory was gone.

Like a wounded animal, River stepped slowly away from them, and then she broke into a run. 

She wasn’t running to anything, and what she wanted to run away from was too fast, too quick, too big. But she was running, because the alternative was standing still, and she couldn’t bear the silence of it all. 

She’d watched her father die. Her mother was dead, too. The Doctor was probably a goner. Her friends — if she could call them that — wouldn’t be able to look her in the eye after knowing what she’d done, what she’d kept from them, what she’d hid. 

And the icing on the cake: Rory would be alive if she’d listened to him in the first place. He told her to leave the Dalek camp. He told her it was a trap. But she’d been tired and she’d been angry and she was feeling confident, and so she stayed, like a fool would’ve done.

They’d blame her. Of course they would. It was her fault. They’d hate her. Yes, they’d hate her. Why wouldn’t they?

Unable to focus on anything but the burn in her lungs — it was the only thing keeping her grounded — the walls to her mind fell in an avalanche of thoughts; she could hear Jack and Ryan thinking away about everything and nothing all at once, even as she put more and more distance between them, and she could feel the pure instinct of woodland creatures fleeing from the monster cutting a path through overgrown bramble and brush. 

Branches whipped her cheeks raw and thorns dug into her ankles, but she ran until she couldn’t run anymore. When her knees finally gave out, she fell onto them and used the last lingering breath in her lungs to shout out a string of curses, and the last bit of strength to punch the ground so hard she felt it rattle in her teeth.

And she wept.


	11. Deathbed Confessional

Under the cover of night, Graham inched his way through the tunnels that housed the Resistance. He’d agreed to meet Clara and Donna at twenty-three hundred hours, and according to his watch — which held up quite well, all temporal mumbo jumbo considered — that was in five minutes. And they’d take him to Rose and Grace. His Grace. His stomach ached with nervous excitement, but his chest ached with grief. 

Harry had been so different. Graham almost hated him. He’d spent his adult life wondering what things would’ve been like if Harry had survived, but it seemed like the universe had another idea entirely. Granted, this world was hardly fit for comparison and rumination, but he’d always thought Harry would be something like a teacher or a poet, someone who helped people, who made them feel things. But he wasn’t. He was a bit rubbish. He was different.

Grace would be different, too. It was like the replications of the Mona Lisa they sold in the gift shop at the Louvre; they might have looked like the real deal, and they might’ve even been beautiful, but they weren’t quite like the original. Nothing ever was. 

A torch light flashed four times down the corridor. That was their code! Graham flashed his own torch right back at them, and soon, they were face-to-face.

“This is dangerous, you know,” said Donna, but Graham was beginning to think she was sort of into this kind of thing. 

“Oh, yeah,” he shrugged. “Just a normal day in the life, eh?” 

“You do sound like you’ve traveled with the Doctor,” Clara teased. “I talked to Rose. She and Grace can get us into the locker. What weapons do you think you’ll need to help River?” 

Graham thought for a moment. His comm piece in his ear had long since run out of energy; he hadn’t heard anyone in quite some time. He just hoped they were alright. 

“I don’t know. Vortex manipulators, maybe. I usually don’t like guns very much, but maybe a few of those.” 

“There’s two de-mat guns,” said Donna. “That’s some serious kit.” 

“Well, we’ve got serious trouble,” Graham countered. He didn’t really know what a de-mat gun did, but something told him it was important. Call it instinct or call it the hand of God, it didn’t really matter. But he was always the type of man who followed his gut. Usually, it led him to the snackbar. But sometimes, when the stars came into alignment and he started to get an inkling of a hunch, he followed it to the right place at the right time.

He only hoped the pit in his stomach was a hunch and not just the remnants of whatever spaceworm stew he’d eaten. 

“How long have you two been in the Resistance?” Graham asked. Small talk. He’d been a bus driver. He loved smalltalk. 

“A few years for me,” Donna said. “I joined right after Amy took over as leader. The prior leader was a girl called Martha. I liked her quite a lot.” She suddenly got quiet, and Clara spoke up to fill the silence.

“I’ve only been around for a year or so. Worked with another insurgency group before that, but the Daleks caught up with us.” she sighed. “It was pretty ugly. I was lucky to make it out alive.” 

“Everyone’s got stories like that, it seems,” said Graham with a sad little huff. “Everyone’s lost something dear to them.” 

“That’s how it is ‘round here,” Donna stated firmly. “It drives some people mad, I reckon. But you’ve got to make it mean something.” 

Up ahead, two figures were coming into view. Graham held his breath. What he was doing felt almost perverse, in a way. Not the whole breaking into the weapons locker thing — that felt totally justified. But what felt wrong was knowing he’d look at Grace and see years of love and adoration, and she’d look at him and see a stranger. He’d look at her and know things — like the way she liked her eggs, or what she put in her coffee, or that she was allergic to hazelnuts and shrimp. It felt like gawking through a peephole drilled into someone else’s life. 

He’d busied himself thinking that he hardly noticed they’d stopped walking. He looked up to find two women standing in front of them. The first was blonde and young, with wide eyes and a pouty sort of smile. The second was blonde, too, but a bit older, a bit wiser, a bit more world-weary. Graham blinked. Where was Grace?

“Rose Tyler,” introduced the first girl, holding out her hand. Graham shook it numbly. 

“And Dr. Grace Holloway,” said the second, smiling politely. Graham shook her hand, too, trying his best not to look disappointed. 

Maybe it was for the best, he told himself. Maybe he was wrong to hope it would be her. Maybe it was best to let the dead rest.

“You said you need time weapons to save your friend?” Rose asked, gesturing for the lot to follow her down another shaft. 

Graham nodded.

“She knows the Doctor,” he watched their eyes light up at the mention. “Saving her means saving the Doc.” 

“I knew he was still out there,” Rose looked up wistfully, as if she was looking through the ceiling and into the eyes of the stars themselves. “Didn’t I tell you, Grace?” 

“You did,” Grace laughed, delighted. “And besides — there are rumours that Harry and Gwen have been planning to destroy these weapons. But I think they’re our only hope at beating the Daleks.” 

“Destroy them?” Clara gasped. “Why the hell would they do that? A lot of people died to get these!” 

“Gwen said they’re too powerful. If they fell into the wrong hands...” Rose shook her head. “De-mat guns write people out of history, but they don’t kill them. They just make the whole universe forget they were ever even real, except for a few sad people who spend the rest of their days wondering. That’s one hell of a weapon. I can understand the anxiety there. But in the right hands, Grace is right; they’re our only hope.” 

“And you trust that this guy’s got the right hands?” Grace looked Graham up and down, seeming unimpressed. That wounded him in a way he couldn’t explain.

“Yeah,” Donna affirmed. “His friend saved my life once. I didn’t get to know her very well, but she sacrificed herself to save people she’d never even met.”

“Sounds like something the Doctor would do,” Rose chimed in. Donna, Clara, and Grace nodded.

“Yeah,” Graham agreed, too. “It sort of does.” 

They paused before a strange and futuristic vault. 

“From what I hear, Harry and his team scavenged this whole thing from a wreckage,” Rose ghosted her fingers across its cool chrome surface. “They say if you enter the code wrong, it’ll vaporise you on the spot.” 

Graham swallowed hard. He didn’t like the sound of that. 

“Well in that case, let’s hope I have a very, very good memory.” 

“What’s the code?” Clara wanted to ask him how he knew, but she’d learned that some questions were better left unanswered. She could never quite get a read on Ianto; he was the only one who knew them, and he’d taken an oath to never tell a soul, no matter what. But Graham was here, and he knew, and she trusted him. Those facts shouldn’t have fit together, but somehow, they did.

And when Graham said, “X-1-2-V-9, then turn the dial to the right twice, and the left twice again,” she did it, and she didn’t think twice.

And the vault opened. 

Rose and Donna had shut their eyes; they were worried the bit about vaporising had been true, but when they opened their eyes once again, they saw instead a wide and vast armoury containing multitudes; a pair of de-mat guns and a dozen vortex manipulators, chronic tripwire, and all sorts of things they’d never seen before in their lives. 

“Blimey,” whispered Rose. “They’ve really been hiding all this down here the whole time?” 

“I expected, like, a storage closet!” Donna laughed. “Not a whole room!” 

“Rule 12,” Grace exhaled. “Always expect the unexpected.” 

“I'll stand guard,” Donna announced. “Be careful.”

As Graham stepped into the armoury, he could hardly believe it. Even looking at weapons capable of such destruction made him feel...he didn’t quite know. The Doctor had told him once to never use weapons unless the damage could be repaired; walls, buildings, cars, those were all things that somebody somewhere could fix. But these things? They wove their way into the gossamer-thin fabric of time itself and pulled on little loose strands until the whole thing came unraveled. She would be mortified if she saw this. But he reckoned she’d be even more mortified if she saw the world they were standing in, so it was sort of balanced out, in a way.

Graham opened up the bag he’d brought along and tucked away a few vortex manipulators, the de-mat guns — which were surprisingly tiny little things — a strand of a strange looking rope that might come in handy, and a small grenade-like device. 

“That’s a sonic bomb,” Grace told him. “They explode and make a noise so loud it can disarm a Dalek from ten feet away.” 

He winced. “And what’s it do to people?” 

“That’s the beauty of it,” Rose said. “The sound is so high it doesn’t affect humans at all.” 

“Cats on the other hand,” Clara winced. “Sort of explode.” 

“Ah,” Graham’s brow furrowed. “That’s nice.” 

“You should take these, too,” Grace picked up a trio of small things that looked like laser pointers. “These are called standstills, because they do exactly that. They make time freeze for about a minute each.” She added in a metal key-shaped device that fit in the palm of her hand but somehow weighed more than everything else combined. “And this is called the Contradiction. You attach it to any weapon, and it manipulates it into doing the exact opposite. Attach it to a standstill, and time speeds up. You get the point.” 

“Thank you,” he smiled at her, and she smiled, too. What a tender thing, he thought. To smile in the midst of weapons built to destroy in a way that could never be repaired. 

Breathless, Donna rushed into the room.

“Harry is coming!” 

“What!?” Rose’s eyes went wide. “He’s supposed to be patrolling the outer perimeter!” 

“Well he isn't’!” 

“Don’t panic!” Graham urged. “Everybody grab a vortex manipulator.” 

Jack had given him the coordinates to his place, to the rendez-vous, and he’d tucked them into the same drawer in his brain where he kept passwords to important websites and birthdays of loved ones. 

“Follow my lead,” he told them the coordinates, and they silently punched them in. “And on three. One. Two…” 

Harry rounded the corner to find the door to the weapons arsenal ajar, and a few vital shelves were empty. He had the feeling something was off, but this? This was bad. He cursed, rushing to activate the PA system on the far wall. With a beep and a ping, it paged Gwen, who’d been sipping a weak cup of coffee and reviewing a few documents in her bunk.

“Gwen,” hissed Harry through the speaker on the wall. She rolled her eyes.

“I’m off duty, mate,” she grumbled.

“I need a temporal trace on stolen vortex manipulators,” he insisted, and Gwen sat up a little straighter. That didn’t sound good. 

“The time weapons locker?” 

“Yeah. It’s been raided, and I think I know by who,” in the centre of his forehead, his skin began to shift and bubble, and then with a sickening tear, it parted, and a Dalek eyestalk poked its way out. It twitched and scanned the room, and when he spoke again, his voice was backed by an emotionless, tinny echo. “Contact the Mothership and transmit the location of the vortex manipulators to the Dalek fleet. I have the feeling they will lead us to more than one traitor. Perhaps, to victory.” 

An eyestalk was jutting out of Gwen’s forehead, too, and her unfocused eyes had glazed over.

In a Dalek’s voice, she droned, “I obey.” 

***

Yaz prided herself in the way she went about getting the codes. In fact, she sort of thought it was genius. She didn’t know what had happened to River, but she hoped desperately she was alright, mostly because she was her friend, but partly because she knew River would be impressed by her chutzpah. Impressing River felt a little like impressing the Doctor, and impressing the Doctor felt a bit like flying. It was something Yaz hadn’t felt since her year-three crush had given her a flower she’d picked from her mum’s garden.

Suddenly, the Doctor felt very far away, and an all-too-familiar sense of doom started to brew in Yaz’s gut. 

She shook her head in a failed attempt at clearing it. She couldn’t stop now. She had to keep going! It’s what the Doctor would tell her to do.

As proud as she was of her plan, there was one thing she hadn’t taken into account when she’d leapt before she’d looked — with Ianto high as a kite, she had no way of finding the Resistance’s hidden entrance. And so she found herself returning instead to Rory’s small ramshackle hut. 

It sat abandoned and still in the ivory moonlight, untouched and undiscovered, which she reckoned was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

“I can’t believe you drugged me!” Ianto whined, scrubbing at his eyes. He was only just starting to come out of the fog she’d cast over him. “That’s really rude, you know. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that?” 

“Nope,” she popped the p. “I’d hoped you’d tell me what I needed to know, but you didn’t.” A lie. River had taught her that, too, perhaps inadvertently. She figure Ianto was not the type of person she wanted for an enemy.

“So now we’re both lost,” he huffed. “Because you’re too stubborn for your own good.” 

“Quit complaining,” she glared at him. “We aren’t lost. I know exactly where we are.” 

She guided him to the bunker in Rory’s shack. If she remembered correctly, the tunnels connected his hideout to Jack’s. “After you.” 

“You want me to climb down into a hole in the ground?” Ten minutes ago, Ianto was reciting his mother’s pancake recipe to a tree that eagerly wanted to hear it. And a few hours ago, he was malnourished and half-asleep in a Dalek prison cell. He probably wasn’t in the best shape to be climbing, but as Yaz saw it, they didn’t have much of a choice.

“Alright, alright, I’ll go first and spot you,” she started down the ladder. “There’s a tunnel down here that’ll take us to Jack.” 

Ianto’s eyes went wide. Silently, he nodded and began his own descent down.

At Jack’s, Ryan was pacing. 

“We should really go after her,” he looked desperately at Jack, who had taken a seat with his head in his hands, deep in thought.

“When she gets like this, she just needs a little time alone,” Jack replied, even though every part of his soul was urging him to agree with Ryan. He loved River — at one point, he’d thought he’d been in love with her, but he’d since realised there was a difference between loving someone and being in love with them, and for what it mattered, he really, really loved her, gently and sweetly and protectively. She was his friend. And she was hurting somewhere out in the vast expanse of woods and rain. 

But she was also River Song, and she didn’t take well to being corralled. He didn’t want to overwhelm her, to corner her, to make her feel trapped. When she was ready, she’d come back — and he pitied anyone who ran into her before that.

“Everyone thinks they need to be alone until they are,” Ryan objected. “And besides, you said it yourself — it’s dangerous out there. What if someone finds her? Like a Dalek soldier or something? They watched her vanish, and they’re bound to come looking.”

Jack sighed. “I know you’re worried. I am, too. But River’s one tough cookie. And—” 

He was cut off by the distinct sizzling sound of time and space crinkling itself up into a paper ball. The light overhead flickered and sizzled, and a handful of bulbs popped as Jack tackled Ryan to the ground. It was just in time, too — two windows were blown out in a storm of broken glass that rained over them. When they looked up from the rubble, Graham was standing in the centre of the room with four women standing on either side of him. (Usually, it was Jack’s job to be surrounded by women.) 

Jack recognised the strangers at once — the only people in the whole of the Resistance with an ounce of heart.

“Jack!” cried Rose, jumping into his arms for a hug. “I didn’t know you and Graham were mates!” 

“I didn’t know if I could really trust you yet,” Graham managed a sheepish smile. “But you lot helped me get these, so I reckon you’re alright,” He passed Jack the bag of time weapons, and Jack, slowly pulling away from Rose’s embrace, could hardly believe his eyes. 

He opened the knapsack and peered inside, and his heart skipped a beat. 

“You did it!” he cried, delighted. “You actually did it! Oh Graham, I could kiss you!” 

“I couldn’t have done it without them,” Graham gestured toward his companions. “Clara, Donna, Rose, and Grace. Ladies, this is my grandson Ryan, and I assume you all know Jack. Everyone seems to, after all.” 

“We sure do,” Donna grinned and shook his hand. “You crazy son of a bitch! Harry would kill you dead if he knew you weren’t already six feet under!”

“He could try,” Jack boasted. “But it would only be a waste of his bullets.” 

“Not to kill the vibe,” Rose piqued up, earning the attention of the others. “But Harry’s going to notice we took the weapons, and he’s going to come looking for us.” 

Jack’s smile faded and he stared at his shoes. “You’re right.” He turned to Ryan. “On second thought, I think I am going to go look for River.” 

“Is she alright?” Graham asked. “I heard—” 

“She’s alive and she’s pissed, and she ran off into the woods,” Jack replied, loading up his old-fashioned Colt 45, just in case. “Rory went into the Dalek camp to rescue her.” Grief coiled somewhere in between his ribs. “He didn’t make it out.”

A mourning hush came over the room, and Clara joined hands with Donna and Rose. Graham let out a sharp exhale and hung his head. 

“Let’s do this, then. Save the world,” he said after awhile. “For Rory.”

“For Rory,” echoed Donna. The others mumbled sad and soft agreements. If they had something to toast, they would’ve.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Ryan asked, trailing Jack to the door. Jack quickly shook his head. 

“No, no, it’s alright. You stay here and look after your granddad. Make sure he doesn’t get into trouble with the ladies while I’m out.” Jack gave Graham a teasing wink that was only the slightest bit forced.

Ryan nodded dutifully. “What if the Daleks or the Resistance or somebody comes?” 

“It’ll take anyone a few hours to get out this far. Hopefully we’ll be back by then.”

“If you’re not?” 

“Then you’re in charge,” Jack gave Ryan’s shoulder a squeeze before stalking out the door, all eyes watching as the form of his wide shoulders vanish into the night. Slowly, Ryan broke into a grin.

“You hear that?” he turned back to Graham. “I’m in charge!” 

Before Graham could voice the concerns he had about that plan — Graham always had concerns, as far as Ryan was concerned — a slip of plaster slid out from the wall and Yaz clambered out of it. Her face coated in grime, she coughed and spit out lumps of dirt.

“There really has to be a better way to do all this,” she complained, standing up and dusting off her trousers. She offered Ianto her hand and helped him out of the hole.

“Yaz!” Ryan rushed to hug her, and Graham quickly joined in. 

“Ianto!” cried Clara. “Are you alright!?” 

With a smug smile, Ianto cracked his knuckles and squared his shoulders. “Rory Williams isn’t the only one who can escape the Daleks.” 

The others looked somberly at the ground. 

“Rory’s dead,” said Donna.

Ianto’s eye twitched. “And Jack?” 

“Just left to find Rory’s kid,” Grace assured him. 

“River,” Yaz’s heart skipped a beat. “She’s alive?” 

Ianto’s eyes went wide. “The crazy girl who helped break me out of the Dalek camp is Rory’s kid!? Amy’s kid!?” 

“Yes, and yes,” said Graham. 

“She’s the daughter of traitors!” 

“We don’t know that for sure,” Ryan defended. “And besides, she’s a good person. My dad’s a bum, but I’m not.”

At that, Ianto got quiet.

“I didn't tell you because Rory and Jack said some members of the Resistance would want her dead,” Yaz told Ianto, looking up at Clara, Donna, Rose, and Grace as if she was only noticing them for the first time.

“That’s probably true,” Rose said. “Harry’s a fanatic and Gwen is only in it for herself.”

“That doesn’t sound like her,” Ianto frowned.

“A lot has changed since you’ve been gone, mate,” Donna heaved a gloomy sigh. “As the Daleks expand their foothold and things just keep getting worse, there’s been a strain on the Resistance.” 

“We’ve lost a lot of good people,” Grace lamented. “And there isn’t an end in sight, it seems. There’s no hope.” 

“There is now,” Ryan looked out the only unbroken window, watching the rain dribble like tears down the glass. “River is hope.” 

Yaz nodded, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Ryan’s right. I just hope she’s okay.” 

Thunder grumbled miserably in the distance, and a flash of lightning cast shadows across the woods. The storm felt deep and dark and endless, but all storms tended to feel that way, Yaz thought. She imagined River and Jack would be back soon, and though their plan hadn’t gone exactly...well, to plan, they were certainly on the right track. And that was good enough for her.

***

Footprints in the mud. It was elementary, really. Jack had almost hoped it would be harder. He loved a good challenge — more specifically, he liked winning — though even he would admit he hardly had time for egoism now. He had to find River. 

And find her, he did — there was a spot where the narrow dirt path opened wide into a grassy clearing. Toward its edge, there was a shallow cave formed by the overgrown roots of an old tree growing sideways on the hillside above. Behind a layer of waterlogged moss sat River Song, shoulders slumped in exhaustion. Something in Jack’s chest ached for her, and he sighed.

“Go away,” she grumbled as his shoes squelched in the mud.

“We’ve got to go back to my place,” he told her. “And if you make me climb in there to drag you out and my pants get all muddy, I’ll never forgive you. I have like, four pairs of trousers, and these are my nice ones.” 

Normally, River would’ve found that sort of funny. But he reckoned she wasn’t really in the mood to laugh. In fact, she didn’t seem to be in the mood to say much of anything.

“Fine, then,” Jack mumbled. “You don’t give me any choice. But I’m billing you for laundry.” 

There was no elegant way to smush himself into the small grotto; the moss stuck wetly to his cheeks and dribbled muddy rainwater into his mouth, which he spit out with a groan. The seat of his trousers found itself planted in a cold puddle, and just as he fancied himself settled in, he straightened his shoulders and his head smacked into a layer of protruding rock. He cursed, rubbing tenderly at the sore spot. 

“See what I do for you?” he grumbled. “I’m going to have a big, ugly bump on my head now.” 

Unamused, River shrugged. “I told you to go away.” 

“C’mon, River,” he sighed. Time to be serious. “I know you’re upset, and I understand, but—” 

“You don’t understand,” she fumed. “You can’t possibly understand.” 

Jack rolled his eyes. “You were always so theatrical. But you’re right. I don’t understand. I care, though. That’s why I’m sitting in a freakin’ mud puddle trying to coax my moody, mean, and heartbroken friend out of a stupid cave.” 

Saying she looked like hell was sort of an insult to hell. Her uniform was muddy and bloody and burned and torn. There was dirt on her cheeks, parted only by the stain of tears she’d cried herself fresh out of. Her hair was soaked and choppy, sticking up at every angle, and her eyes were glossy with a mix of fatigue and grief. Jack reached out to hold her hand, but she yanked it away. 

“Talk to me, Rivs,” he cooed. “Listen, I’m sorry about Rory. I know it hurts. He was my friend. But he was your father.” 

“It was my fault,” she looked up at him for the first time, and her split lip trembled. 

“No, no—” 

“He died because I fancied myself a hero. He died because I thought I was cleverer and braver and more capable than anyone else, as if I was some storybook hero, and all I’d done was dig my own grave. Only he leapt to lie in it so I wouldn’t have to!” River spoke coldly, as if she was stating simple facts that she’d cut herself out of. Jack shook his head.

“Rory made a choice. You’re not responsible for the choices that any other person makes,” he insisted. “Gosh, River, do you blame yourself for the Spanish Inquisition, too? Or what about the pillaging of Ghengis Khan? The rise of the Third Reich?” 

“Shut up,” River kicked lightly at him. 

“I mean it! None of this is your fault.” 

“You know that I told the Watcher the Doctor’s name,” she accused. “Don’t pretend that isn’t the elephant in the room.” 

“There’s like a whole herd of elephants in here,” Jack emphasised. “My point is that you’re the only person blaming yourself for literally anything. I mean, honestly — you’re not a monster! Do you know how loved you are?” Jack paused to let his words settle. River shifted uncomfortably, and he went on. “So many people just adore you. That’s why Rory died. Not because you were so terrible and reckless that he had to jump in and save the day, but because he loved you more than he loved being alive. Your mother always talked about you, too. The Doctor chose you over the stars themselves. I came out here in the pouring down rain to sit in a muddy cave and talk to you, not because I had to, but because I wanted to. Because I love you, too, you jerk.” 

Something in River’s chest was putting pressure on something else, and she felt like crying. But she’d done that already, and it had only made her feel worse. Weak. Like a frightened child crying in the woods. Been there, done that. 

She’d spent the rest of her time in the woods watching birds hop across the floor, desperately dodging raindrops. She’d been thinking about how fortunate animals really were when Jack arrived; birds don't mourn for their broken-winged brethren. They don’t know the difference between a good life and a bad one, because everything is always the same. Time always moves in one direction for them — forward, unyieldingly forward. Like a steam-engine train with no brakes. Birds don’t fear the day death comes to the ones that they love. They don’t even know that it’ll one day come for them, too. What a life, River thought. What a terrible, gentle, horrendous, lovely life. 

Jack nudged her, and she realised she’d been thinking again.

With a stubborn sniffle, she opened her fist to reveal a damp piece of paper. She passed it over to Jack without a word.

“What is this?” he started to unfold it.

“A letter my father wrote me,” she clarified. “Read it.” 

“ _There are a lot of things I haven’t said yet that I should’ve said a long time ago. I know I might not live to say them at all, and so I give you this letter. This is my deathbed confessional to you, my daughter. Melody Pond,_ ” Jack read aloud, and added, “River, this is private. I shouldn’t be reading it.” 

“I want you to.” 

“Alright then,” Jack sighed, knowing better than to argue with her. He went on. 

“ _First of all, I want to tell you the truth. It’s an ugly truth, but it’s real — it wasn’t your mother who gave information to the Daleks. It was me,_ ” Jack’s eyes went wide. “ _When Amy was captured, a Dalek operative told me they’d spare her life in exchange for information. I’m sure you know that when you love someone, you’ll do anything that you think might save them. That’s why you came here — to save the people you love. And so I told the Daleks what they wanted to know. And they lied. And she died. And I was too much of a coward to admit what I’d done to even my best friend Jack, even when the whole world seemed to attack Amy’s honour._

_“I am not proud. In fact, I am ashamed. And I’m more sorry than words could ever convey. But I tell you this so that you know you are not alone; you are not the only person in the world who has done something they regret. And if you can find it in your heart to forgive me, you can find it in your heart to forgive yourself._ ”

Jack lowered the letter and looked over the paper at River, whose lip had begun to tremble. 

“He’s right that I can forgive him, so I don’t have an excuse to hate myself for what I’d done,” She sniffled. “Cheeky bastard. Keep reading.”

The tips of Jack’s fingers had started to shake, too, and when he went for a deep breath, he found that he couldn’t quite manage it.

“ _I’m sorry to have left you like I did. I’m sorry that I never knew how to be a father. But I need you to remember these things, Melody. One: No one is ever really gone. Not forever. Not entirely. When people die, sometimes we feel like parts of ourselves died, too, but that’s just the feeling of an entirely new part being forged in steel. If it hurts, let it hurt. It’s a growing pain,_ ” Jack looked up at River and wondered what she was thinking. She was holding onto the locket so firmly it had left a dent in her palm. When she turned her attention expectantly back to Jack, he continued.

“ _Two: Love is the only thing that’s real. Everything else is secondary. Love your friends and let them love you. In a world that hates so desperately, to love is a radical act of courage. And you’re going to have to be very, very brave,_ ” Jack took a breath. “ _And three: You are never alone. This one doesn’t need any explanation. It’s true in the same, concrete way that the sentence, ‘The sun rises in the east,’ is true. It’s a fact of nature, a universal constant. You are never alone._ ” 

The ink had started to bleed as runoff rainwater dripped down onto the page, and Jack handed it back to River. She tucked it into her pocket.

“Why did you have me read that?” he asked numbly once he remembered how to speak.

River shook her head. “I don’t know.” 

“What are you feeling?” 

“Everything and nothing all at once,” she laughed miserably. “Which is just a fancy way of saying I have absolutely no idea.”

Jack nodded. “Yeah.” He held out his hand toward her, and after a hesitant pause, she took it. He smiled kindly as he ran his thumb across her bruised knuckles.

“It’s hard being a person, huh? I don’t know much about it. I’m sort of bad at it myself, being a person. And it sucks. But I do know that when you’ve been hurt — hurt in a way that shows up in your dreams, in a way that kinda sneaks up behind you — all the happiness in the world doesn’t make that hurt go away,” he paused, realising now that he was never really good at these kind of talks, and that he was really more of a point-and-shoot type of guy. But he also was the type of guy to finish the things he started, and so he continued.

“If you’re sitting out there waiting to feel better, I think you might spend the rest of your life out in these woods,” he looked outside as a distant thunder growled. The rain had slowed to a delicate patter, and overhead, the grey clouds had parted into patches of midnight blue. “You know, most people think dimensionally-transcendental tech was invented by the Gallifreyans.”

“It was,” River stated, never one to turn down the opportunity to correct him.

“Nah, they were just clever enough to make it fly,” Jack gave a dismissive wave. “Humans were the first to create something dimensionally transcendental when they conceptualised the idea of the soul — people are so small and fragile on the outside, but on the inside, there’s a universe contained within itself; stardust and fairytales and all that other mushy stuff. Love and hope and rage. You told me that, and I think a part of you still believes it,” Jack squeezed her hand, grinning at the faint smile struggling reluctantly at her lips. 

“You sound like the Doctor.” It almost seemed like an accusation. She knew trauma intimately enough to know she wasn’t going to feel better — Jack had been right about that. No amount of gentle words could chase away the kind of hurt that she was feeling. But he was right about another thing, too: She couldn’t sit in that cave for the rest of her life. The Doctor needed her. Amy and Rory had been fighters down to the very last breath, despite any and all bad things in between, and she would have to be a fighter, too.

“The Doctor sounds like me,” Jack countered playfully. “You can debate it with him when we save him. Which we can’t do if we die in a landslide or lightning strike or something out here. Talk about anticlimactic!” He clambered out of the small cave, pulling River along with him. Before he had the chance to guide her back toward his shack, she caught his hand and held him still.

“Jack?” 

“Hm?” 

“You’re a good friend,” River decided. “Thank you.” 

“For what?” Jack dismissed it with a humble shrug. 

“For reminding me who I am,” it was her turn to pull him along now.

“And who’s that?” Jack jogged to catch up. 

She wanted to say, _a small and fragile loser with a raging universe inside me,_ because that’s how she felt, really. But she settled instead for a confident and only-slightly teary-eyed, “My parents’ daughter. An enemy of about 67 states throughout the universe.”

“Only 67!?” 

River managed a bleary-eyed laugh. “Soon to be 68, when we win this thing.”


	12. Because I Could Not Stop For Death

Jack didn’t have much by way of food at his place, but Graham and Grace were making do with a sizable portion of spaghetti and tomato sauce made from whatever vegetables they could round up outside. Food healed whatever ailed the heart. That’s what Graham’s dad used to say. And so far, he’d been right. 

“Were you a chef back in the real world?” Grace teased, watching with delight as Graham added some fresh basil to the pot. 

“I was a bus driver,” he gushed. “But my grandson’s one of the pickiest eaters I’ve ever met. I’ll eat anything, me, but I had to learn to get creative, or else Ryan would live on pizza and Chinese takeaway. If I hide vegetables in the sauce, he’ll get his fill of greens without even knowing it.”

“That _is_ creative,” Grace giggled. “I think I’d have to side with Ryan, though. I know it isn’t good for me — I’m a cardiologist; I get paid to scoop that crap out of people’s arteries — but there’s nothing quite like pizza.” 

“You sound like my wife,” he quipped, though there was a sharp edge to his laugh. “She was a nurse, but she had a sweet tooth unlike anything I’ve ever seen. She’d tell me I had to watch my sugar through a mouthful of doughnut.” Graham’s smile slipped from his lips. “Her name was Grace, too.” 

“She seems lovely,” Grace looked up from the spaghetti sauce she’d been stirring. Graham was looking into the second pot of noodles with an intensity that didn’t seem like him at all — if the meaning of life was hidden between tangles of pasta, Graham would’ve found it.

“She was,” he snapped out of it and forced a quick smile. Grace touched his arm gently, carefully, soothingly, and when Graham looked up from his unfocused stare into the pot, he found that she was looking at him with such a comforting fondness. It was almost enough to make him feel okay. And sometimes, almost was all he could hope for.

“Have you lost someone?” he asked her. 

Grace gave the pasta an absent stir. “My mother died when I was just a little girl. I became a doctor to keep that from happening to other little girls.” 

Graham reached for the spoon, and when his fingers brushed against hers, he felt something electric that he hadn’t felt in a long while. And then his cheeks flushed pink, and he hummed a tune for no reason at all. Did he have a thing for women named Grace who worked in the medical field? If he did, it was a very, very specific thing. And they were in the middle of the end of the world. And he’d probably never see her again after they stopped said world from ending. He shouldn’t have felt so sad at the thought, and yet sadness hit him with such a confidence that he stopped humming mid-melody and cleared his throat to cover it up.

“I’m sorry about your mum,” he said.

“It was a long time ago,” Grace managed a comforting smile. “I’m not that little girl anymore.” 

“No, certainly not,” he smiled, too, but quickly retracted. “Not that you’re old or anything! That certainly wasn’t what I was implying,” he laughed a bit too loudly. “And I’m hardly one to talk! About being old, I mean. I—” 

“Breathe, Graham,” teased Grace, pressing a spoonful of sauce to his lips. He took a taste and made a satisfied sound.

“We make a good team.” 

“Yeah,” Grace agreed fondly. “I think we do.” 

Ryan had joined Yaz, Clara, Donna, Rose, and Ianto outside. Too many cooks in the kitchen, Graham had said. And besides, with the rain on its way out, it was actually sort of nice. Peaceful, he meant. Deceptively so. 

But there was something no one wanted to mention, and finally, Yaz decided to clear her throat. 

“I feel like we should talk about what happened to Rory.” 

The silence was palpable. 

“Talking won’t change nothing,” Rose said after awhile. “Sometimes bad things happen. That’s all, really.” 

“It’s just…I’ve never really known anyone who died before. I mean, grandfathers and stuff, yeah, but they’re old.” Yaz realised how absurd that might seem among her mixed company, but it was true, and sometimes, the truth was far more absurd than any lie could ever be.”It just feels really heavy.”

Ryan put an arm around her shoulder and nodded in agreement. 

“I’ve known a lot of people who died, and it doesn’t ever get lighter.” 

“Yeah,” Ianto agreed. “The most you can do is just...keep going. The world doesn’t stop for death.”

“That’s a poem isn’t it?” Clara put down the stick she’d been toying with in the mud. “Emily Dickenson. ‘Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me. The carriage held but just ourselves, and immortality.’”

Ryan looked up at the treetops swaying lightly in the wind. He’d always known that poetry was, at its heart, sad. And that poets were, too.

They sat for a beat as a heavy silence blanketed them. Ryan was thinking about poetry and how much he didn’t understand it, and Yaz was wondering when she stopped feeling sad and started feeling numb. Ianto was thinking about Jack, eyeing the woods in hopes that he’d soon see the faintest silhouette cut through settling fog. 

And eventually, he did. 

It was Donna who had called it, standing up on the porch and turning her attention to the line of trees a few meters away. Jack and River emerged, muddy and wet, without the faintest spring in their step. But they were there, and they were together, and they were alive. 

The moment Jack saw Ianto, he froze. It was like it was in the movies; the world around him went all blurry by the edges, and if he listened hard enough, he was sure he could’ve heard some cheesy 90’s pop song by a band no one’s ever heard of.

But it was perfect. A little slice of heaven in the middle of hell and high water. He hugged Ianto, and Ianto hugged him, and there was nothing else.

Yaz and Ryan rushed to River, who managed a small and tidy smile.

“I’m glad you made it back okay,” she told Yaz in earnest, and then turned to Ryan. “And you were brilliant fixing the kit.” 

“How are you feeling?” Ryan asked her. 

“Like I could really use a Jammie Dodger.” 

Ryan cracked a small smile, and River flashed one right back.

“We haven’t got any biscuits, but Graham and Grace made spaghetti,” Yaz could smell the tart tomato sauce wafting out from the kitchen. “Grace is from the Resistance, but she’s on our side. And so are Rose, Donna, and Clara,” she paused. “They said they know you.” 

“Spoilers,” River put her index finger to her lips. “I don’t know them yet. Maybe I will someday. Maybe that’s a sign that there’s a future,” she paused. She rather liked that idea. “But you’re sure we can trust them?” 

Ryan nodded. “They helped Graham score the time weapons.” 

“And I used your lipstick to get the codes!” Yaz boasted, tossing the tube back to River. 

“Atta girl!” River praised, tucking it into her pocket. 

“Don’t ‘atta girl’ her!” complained Ianto. “I’m the one she drugged!” 

Jack, with his arm still around his lover, threw his head back and let out a hearty laugh. Ianto did not seem quite as amused.

“You’re all mad,” he grumbled, but he leaned his head against Jack’s shoulder, happy to be home at the very least. He’d take madness over insanity any day — he had learned that there was, in fact, a subtle difference. 

River cracked a small smile. “Yaz, can you show me what weapons we’re working with?”

“Yeah, of course, but I don’t really know what they do,” she turned to Rose. “Do you?”

“Sort of,” she said. “But Grace knows more. She’s inside helping Graham with supper.”

“Good enough,” River gestured for Yaz to follow her into the house. Graham was cooking spaghetti with a lady River didn’t recognise, and she really wasn’t in the mood to be meeting new people. Especially people who seemed, for the post part, cheerful. River herself was feeling anything but, and when Graham turned to face her with a grin, she almost had to look away.

“How are you feeling?” He asked her, as if the answer wasn’t obvious.

“I’m fine,” River insisted, and Graham — having lived with Ryan and his demons for years — knew enough to back off.

“Good job with the time weapons,” River told him, feeling a slight pang of guilt at the thought of snapping at someone like Graham. He seemed like a good man, and he’d bravely risked a great deal to get the kit in the first place.

Seeming to sense what she was thinking, he gave a dismissive wave.

“Just doing my part, that’s all,” he shrugged. “Have you met Grace?” 

“No, but I need her to show me what we’re working with.” 

“Gladly,” Grace gave Graham a parting smile before retrieving a bag they’d tucked away under the sink. She passed it to River.

“Have you heard of the Contradiction?” she asked her. 

Confused, River shook her head. She knew a great deal about time weaponry, but she was sure she’d never heard of a thing like that before. 

Grace held in the palm of her hand a small, thick key. It didn’t reflect the light coming down from a few buzzing bulbs overhead, and when she handed it to River, it shocked her hand. Startled, she nearly dropped it, but with a last-minute fumble, she kept it from hitting the ground.

“Are you alright!?” Yaz hollered, looking at the Contradiction like it might just snap up and bite her.

“What the hell was that?” Grace seemed puzzled; she’d never seen anything like it before.

“Temporal energy,” River shook the tingle out of her hand. It sort of felt like pins and needles, but much stranger, like it was coming from someplace far beneath her flesh, deeper than bone. “What is this, Grace?” 

“It’s a modifier,” she said. “Whatever you add it onto, it creates the opposite effect.” 

River held up a standstill, inspecting it closely. “There’s nowhere on these to attach the thing.” 

“Yet,” Grace corrected. She held up a second standstill and extended her hand for the key. River passed it to her, watching with fascination as the reality around the device began to warp and distort, and then suddenly there was a keyhole. There had always been a keyhole. 

Yaz let out a sharp exhale. “Wow.”

“Aside from that and the standstills, there’s a rope, pair of de-mat guns and these vortex manipulators,” she tapped the kit on her wrist. “We all had to put one on to escape the Resistance.”

“Why escape from them?” River glanced between Grace and Yaz. “I thought the plan was—” 

“Things didn’t quite go to plan,” Yaz explained, sheepish. “The end product was the same, though, and that’s what matters.” 

“But there’s a new problem,” added Grace. “Harry — he’s the guy in charge of the Resistance — is going to notice that we took weapons, and he’s going to come looking.” 

“So we have to move,” River picked up the bag and slung it over her shoulder. 

“There’s time for a quick meal,” Graham insisted, piling spaghetti into a tin can and passing it to River. “You look like you haven’t eaten in ages.”

“Gee, thanks,” she grumbled. 

But if she was honest, she was hungry. Ravenous, even. She didn’t feel much like eating and her appetite had been scared off by grief and anger, but on a purely physical level, her stomach growled. 

Maybe a few bites wouldn’t hurt. 

*** 

A quick meal had led to a quick nap, and River would’ve been the first to protest wasting time on something like sleep — that is, if she hadn’t been the first one out like a light. 

She awoke to rays of sunlight beaming in from a broken window, highlighting the small specks of dust floating aimlessly about. She sat up quickly with a startled gasp and looked at her wrist for the watch she wasn’t wearing. 

“What time is it?”

Jack had put some coffee on, and he glanced over at River with a small smile.

“Like, six-ish.” 

Everyone else was still sound asleep, snoring softly from various piles of blankets or jackets or pillows or, in Graham’s case, burlap sacks. 

“It was irresponsible to stay here and sleep,” River stood up, stretching. “We could’ve been ambushed.” 

“We all took turns keeping watch,” Jack handed her a drink. “We didn’t wake you because we figured you needed sleep more than most of us.” he paused. “You’ve had a rough few days.”

River’s eyes narrowed into a glare. “I don’t need sleep, and I certainly don’t need pity or special treatment,” she hissed. “I’m half-Time Lord.” 

“And half-human,” corrected Jack. “And, if I remember correctly, not a morning person.” 

River sipped her coffee stubbornly, wincing at its bitterness.

“Have you got any sugar?” 

Jack shook his head. “You’re lucky we have coffee, let alone its accoutrements.” he paused. “How are you feeling? Physically, I mean.” 

“Sore,” she admitted. “But it’s nothing I can’t handle.” 

“No, of course not,” Jack knew her better than that. “And emotionally?” 

“Jack,” she warned, and he backed off.

“Alright, alright, let’s talk shop, then,” he guided River to sit at the table. “We need a next step.” 

“What have we got to work with?” she rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “Vortex manipulators, de-mat guns, standstills, chronic rope, and whatever the hell that Contradiction thing is.” 

“Slow down,” Jack eased. “Before we can plan our attack, we need to know where we’re going next. We can’t stay here.” 

River nodded thoughtfully. “I take it my father’s house is out of the question, too.” 

“Yeah,” Jack felt a pang of sorrow at the thought of Rory. They’d gotten close. Closer than close. They were like brothers, in a way. River sensed his unease and put her hand on his arm.

“I know,” she muttered. “I miss him, too.” 

“But it’s like I said,” Jack perked up. “We can save him. If we can get the world back to normal, it’ll be like this one never happened.” 

The weight of the world settled on her shoulders, and River shifted uncomfortably. 

“Yeah.” 

“There’s a little town a couple miles west,” Jack was eager to change the subject. “It used to be the homebase for an insurgent group called Morrigan’s Army, after the Celtic goddess of war. But after a particularly nasty Dalek raid, Morrigan’s Army went off the grid, and the town was abandoned.” 

River made a thoughtful noise, though she was only half-listening. She was watching the rain fall outside, swallowing back a rising sense of hopelessness. At first, she felt like David in a world made of Golliaths, but she was starting to feel more like a Titan footsoldier in the Battle of the Gods. A determined fighter on the losing side. 

She wondered where the Doctor was. She tried to reach out to him with her mind, but whatever psychic strand she needed to latch onto was always floating just slightly out of reach. Moreover, she wondered what he’d do if their roles were reversed. If she’d been whisked away to some bubble universe, and he was stuck in a world surrounded by a sense of loss so profound it took his breath away. Part of her reckoned he’d have a logical plan, a simple course of action interspersed with creative loopholes and clever ideas and good humour. But she knew him better than that. She knew that to the people of the Gamma Forest, “Doctor” meant “might warrior,” and she knew why, too. And so she was torn.

“We could go there,” Jack suggested, tapping the table to get River’s attention.

River snapped out of her tired reverie. “Where?” 

Jack groaned. “You weren’t listening, were you?” 

“Of course I was bloody listening,” she grumbled. 

“What did I say, then?” 

“Bug off.” 

“Incorrect,” Jack teased. “I said we could go to that little town — it’s called Dochas — and hide away there while we plan our next move. We need to get at the Watcher again.” 

River shook her head. “I don’t know, Jack.” 

Jack cocked his head to the side. “What do you mean?” 

“I mean I don’t know,” she repeated, more urgently this time. “The Watcher is a powerful telepath.” 

“And you are, too.” 

“As if,” River scoffed. “You heard what the Watcher said. I couldn’t even stop myself telling him the Doctor’s name. He couldn’t have created the bubble universe without knowing it. The Doctor’s got safeguards on that sort of thing.” 

“Do you have a better idea?” 

River shrugged. “Not yet. But no one else has to die. And if we try to infiltrate the Dalek camp again, we’re going to lose people.” 

“Everyone here is willing to make that sacrifice.” 

“Well I’m not!” River stood up, and her chair clattered to the floor. The others, who had been sleeping, stirred and sat up. 

“Good morning,” muttered Graham, displeased.

Ryan rolled over and shut his eyes. “Talk about a rude awakening.” 

River glanced at Jack, and then took a deep breath, collecting herself. 

“Rise and shine, you lot,” she picked up a pan and a spoon and smacked them loudly together. Slowly but surely, everyone grumbled themselves awake. 

“What time is it?” complained Rose. 

“Time to get moving,” River replied. “There’s a town just west of here called Dochin—” 

“Dochas,” Jack corrected.

“Whatever. We’re going there to regroup. Between the Daleks and the Resistance, we’ve got a lot of powerful people on our tail.” 

Yaz looked out the window at the rain and sighed.

“It can never stay dry out there for very long, can it?” 

“Welcome to England,” Clara grumbled. “It’s a shame I didn’t pack my wellies.”

“Rain or shine, we need to move. Now.”

Donna wanted to gripe, who died and left you in charge? But she knew that there was an answer, and she’d rather not go there. 

“Everyone hand over the vortex manipulators,” River went on, holding out the large pot she’d used as a noise maker. “The ones from the weapons locker.” 

“Why?” Jack asked, watching as the pot filled with discarded kit. 

“These things can be traced,” River explained. “We need to minimise our temporal footprint from here on out.”

“What are you going to do with them?” Graham watched her carefully as she began to meddle with wires and buttons he didn’t understand. 

“I’m going to overload their temporal relays,” she told him, but when she read the blank stares on everyone’s faces, she sighed and went on. “Time kit produced chronon energy. Like most energies, chronon is both highly active and reactive. The active power is the product of the voltage, current and the cosine of the angle between them,” she adjusted a wire and smiled proudly at whatever effect it produced. “The reactive power is the product of voltage and current and the sine of the angle between them—” 

Jack cleared his throat. “Easy, professor. Laymen’s terms, maybe.” 

River stifled a frustrated groan. This is why she never opted to teach introductory classes.

“Fine,” she huffed. “Think of it like a nuclear reactor. When a reactor is turned on, the uranium nuclei undergo nuclear fission, splitting into lighter nuclei and producing heat and neutrons. The neutrons can create a self-sustaining chain reaction by causing nearby uranium nuclei to split, too. Fresh water flows around the fuel rods, keeping the fuel rods from overheating and also producing steam for a turbine,” one of the vortex manipulators let out a sharp hiss, and River shushed it. 

“But if not enough water flows into the reactor’s core, the fuel rods will boil the water away faster than it can be replaced, and the water level will decrease. Without enough water, the fuel rods get so hot that they melt. If they begin to melt the nuclear reactor core and the steel containment vessel and release radiation into the environment, boom — you’ve got meltdown,” she noticed that Ryan was nodding, and that seemed good enough. “Chronon energy works much the same; it pulls artron energy from the vortex, and that energy undergoes a matter-antimatter fission cycle that converts us into energy, sends us flying through the vortex, and converts us back into matter when we’ve reached our destination. But basically, oxygen works with artron energy the same way water works with nuclear energy — keeps the vortex in the vortex, and keeps it all from going up in smoke. And I’m smothering these.” 

“I’m no scientist,” Rose swallowed. “But it sounds like that’s going to explode.” 

“At least someone was paying attention.” 

Graham and Yaz shared a startled look. 

“River,” Jack took hold of her arm, noting their alarm. “Are you thinking clearly?” 

“Oh, always. Or maybe it’s never. But there’s a method to my madness,” she smiled smugly. “One: The explosion will release so much artron and chronon energy that it’ll be impossible to detect us for a while because everything will be so saturated. This’ll give us time to regroup and come up with a plan. Two: The Daleks will trace the chronon energy surge to here and assume we were vaporised in the explosion,” she paused. “Which we will be, if we aren’t out of here in the next five minutes.”

Everyone paused, looked at each other, and ran as fast as they could. 

Rolling his eyes, Jack grabbed the bag of weapons with one hand and River’s arm with the other, pulling her along. 

“You know I live there, right!?” he glanced back over his shoulder, anticipating a fiery glow that hadn’t yet consumed his old house. “And you’re going to blow it up!” 

“Yes, I am,” River said with a shrug. “Oh, don’t look so put out, Jack. Everything burns eventually.” 

“With you around, it really does,” he grumbled.

“And besides,” she offered a small, almost apologetic smile. “We’ll get you back to the proper world, and you’ll be hiding away in your Torchwood bunker in no time.”

A cosmic bang shook the ground beneath their feet, and a blinding ray of light shot out of the old hut and into the sky. The clouds themselves seemed to glow as they churned and thickened, and the wind swept up anything that wasn’t bolted down in a temporal whirlwind of odds and ends. When River turned to glance over her shoulder at the scene of her destruction, she saw only the distant flicker of flames and faint wisps of black smoke. 

The make-shift little house no longer stood on its plot of muddy grass. Maybe it hadn’t ever been there at all.


	13. Dochas

It wasn’t that Clara minded a walk. In fact, she started every day with a brisk jaunt through the woods. But there was a difference between a walk and a hike, and whatever she was currently doing barely qualified as either.

And that wasn’t the only thing. It was a great deal more complicated than that. In a way, it always was. 

“You alright?” Donna nudged her. “You’ve been quiet. And as long as I’ve known you, you’ve never shut up.” 

Clara gave a half-hearted laugh. “Just thinking. That’s all.”

“That’s new, too.” 

“Oi!” she gave Donna a playful punch, and they both giggled. But Clara’s smile slowly faded. “Can I tell you something, Donna?” 

“Yeah,” she encouraged. “Go on, then.” 

“You know how I said I worked for a different rebel group before I found the Resistance?” 

Donna nodded.

“And how it ended ugly?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Well, it was called Morrigan’s Army. And it was based out of Dochas.” 

Donna scanned her face for any signs of terror or trauma, for any lingering ghosts of something horrid. But Clara’s expression was neutral and calm. Factual. Cold. She knew all too well the way grief tended to turn to stone.

“That must be difficult for you.” 

“That’s the thing,” Clara looked at her, suddenly troubled. “I know it should feel scary. But right now, it just feels like part of the mission. And I’m just here wondering when the hell I became a soldier.”

Donna took her hand and gave it a squeeze. She wanted to say something comforting, but sometimes silence spoke louder and far more eloquently than whatever soft poetry she could’ve come up with. And so for awhile, they walked hand-in-hand, soothed by the presence of friendship.

After a thoughtful pause, Clara called out to Jack, who had taken the lead when the foliage had grown too dense and the path too small for anything other than single-file travel.

“Are we there yet?” 

“Don’t make me turn this procession around,” he teased. “We’ll be there soon.” 

“How soon is soon, exactly?” Yaz glanced at River, who seemed deep in thought a few paces ahead. When she didn’t reply, Yaz gave her shoulder a light tap, and River startled. 

“Sorry!” Yaz held up her hands in submission. “Didn’t mean to give you a fright.” 

“What do you need?” 

River’s tone was curt and cold, and Yaz realised suddenly she didn’t need anything badly enough to justify a full conversation.

“Nothing,” she shook her head. “Nevermind.” 

The truth was, River had been thinking about a strange dream she’d had the previous night. It hadn’t felt like a dream in the way that dreams usually felt sort of...spectral. When she’d dreamt of Rory in his garden, things were strange and off-balance and uncanny, and light trails had followed the motion of his hands and clippers and garden tools. But her dream last night had been different.

The Doctor had been there. And ‘there’ was a rather loose term, really, because they didn’t seem to be anywhere. And yet, they were everywhere all at once. 

“You need to be brave,” he told her. “I know your heart is hurt, sweetie, but pick yourself up and save the world. And then I’ll kiss it better when I can.” 

She touched her chest and sighed sadly. It had felt so real, so tactile, so physical. She could feel the warmth of his breath against her ear and hear the drum of his hearts in her chest — a steady rhythm of one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four. It was almost like how things felt when he’d whispered them into her mind, straight from his own. So present. So close. For a moment, she’d allowed herself to believe with all that she was that it had been real. Part of her still believed it, long after sleep’s lofty fog had dissipated. That’s all it took to keep her going; one faint whisper that might’ve been but a dream. How droll. If she wasn’t currently stifling a handful of mental crises, she might’ve scoffed.

But instead, she fixed her eyes ahead on Jack’s back as he led them toward Dochas.

***

Harry Galligher watched the remnants of flames boldly defy the pounding rain, and he sighed.

“What do you reckon?” asked Gwen. 

“It’s hard to say,” he paused, thoughtful. “River Song’s got a file six inches thick.” The eyestalk protruding from his forehead gave a twitch. “She’s far too clever to let these things blow up by accident.” 

“A suicide, then?” 

“Or a cover-up,” Harry turned to face the Dalek agents scanning the grounds. “Call into the City Centre. We need to use the Time Lord telepath. Our technology can’t trace her energy, but his mind could trace her mind. They’re already linked.” 

A few agents nodded and made their way off to carry out his commands.

“If there’s one thing Professor Song is good at, it’s running,” Harry mused, turning to Gwen. “As long as we keep her on her toes, she’ll be a step ahead of us.”

“So we need to stagger her,” Gwen considered this. “Everyone has a weakness. We need to find hers, and exploit it.” 

Harry’s lips twisted into a devilish grin. “Consider it done.” 

Gwen heard footsteps approaching from behind her, and she turned to face her company with a startled gasp. 

Rory Williams stood there in the rain, his stare unfocused and arms limp at his sides. An eyestalk jutted out of his forehead, right in the middle, glowing red as it received information transmitted from the mothership. 

“I serve the Dalek Supreme,” he said, his own voice backed by a Dalek’s tinny drawl. “I await your command.” 

***

“One minute, I was working at my agency — the temp agency, I mean — and the next, I’m waking up in a place that makes the old Chiswick look like bloody Surrey!” 

Ryan had never been to Surrey — or to Chiswick, for that matter — but he nodded politely as Donna went on. 

“Now of course, my first thought was the Doctor,” she sighed hopefully. “He gets us in a whole mess of trouble every other day, that one. But time went on, one second after another, and it never does that when he’s around. And after awhile, I started to think that maybe I was the crazy one. Maybe I’d been dreaming. Or maybe I’d had some sort of psychotic break or something. I’ve heard those can happen.” 

Ryan nodded once again. “Quite common, actually.” 

“Right!?” Donna agreed. “But then I met folks like Clara, Rose, and Grace, and…” 

Yaz had been listening in, but she’d heard the story so many times, she could hardly bear to listen to it again. She sort of felt bad for Ryan, who couldn’t so easily escape Donna's talkative partnership, but at the same time, she would’ve preferred talkative to River’s moody silence.

“So,” Yaz cleared her throat. “It sure does rain a lot, eh?” 

River glanced at her, unimpressed. But her expression slowly softened.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier,” she looked down at her boots. Apologising was hardly her style. “I didn’t mean it.” 

Yaz smiled carefully. “I know. You don’t have to be sorry. If I were in your position, I reckon I wouldn’t be the happiest, either.” 

That’s just the thing, River thought. She prided herself with her staunch unflappability. She’d stared down the barrel of a dozen different guns without blinking an eye. She’d bested the kind of monsters that not even nightmares can predict, and she’d faced such agonising humours that ought to have numbed her to the world for good. But she’d never let it shake her. But oh, she was shaken. She hurt in a way she’d never hurt before, and that was really saying something.

That’s the other thing — she’d figured that there was a point at which things stopped hurting, a point at which nothing could cut her any deeper, when she’d finally be safe from the woes and wiles of the universe’s firm backhand. It was sort of like some sort of cosmic lidocaine, and every time she thought she’d found it, something happened that slit open all her old wounds and projected her outside of her rational-thinking self, where she watched her soul bleed out with all the urgency of an incurable hemophilia. 

And that’s where she was right now: somewhere outside of herself, bleeding and feeling kind of sick.

“I’m fine,” she told Yaz — and maybe she was telling herself, too. 

“Okay,” Yaz didn’t believe her.

“I mean it!” 

“I didn’t say—” 

“It’s not like any of it matters, anyhow,” she forced a stiff shrug. “My private loss pales in comparison to that which the universe stands to lose if we don’t act fast.” 

Yaz frowned. She’d been trained in this sort of de-escalation, but the constable couldn’t have even dreamt anything like this, and so she figured it was better to leave well enough alone.

Ianto gave a little jog to catch up with Jack. He wasn’t feeling his best — Dalek prison camps sort of had the effect on people. But seeing Jack again was like remembering how to breathe.

“Not to sound like a child. Or like Clara,” he reached for Jack’s hand. “But are we there yet?” 

Jack chuckled. It was good to have him back, but he couldn’t stop thinking about how temporary it all was. Life, he reckoned, was a bit like a sunset: it was beautiful, but then it was dark. For everyone but him, that is. He was cursed with permanence. 

“You never were very patient,” he caught Ianto’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “The town should be right up ahead.”

“Are you alright?” Ianto pried. “You don’t seem like yourself.” 

“What do I seem like?” 

Ianto paused for a moment, thinking. “I don’t know. You seem...introspective.” 

Jack laughed. “I’m always introspective.” 

“Yeah,” scoffed Ianto. “And I’m Miss America.” 

Jack laughed again, only this time, it was real. But the sound was cut off in his throat as Dochas came into view; it was hardly a laughing matter.

He could easily see how it could’ve been a town, once upon a time. But he could also see the scars of its bloody history written plainly in the dirt. Buildings were burned, sitting in piles of themselves, soggy with rain. There were deep divots in the ground where the Dalek blasts had struck — no matter how much time went by, grass would never grow there again.

River paused beside Jack, and a chill raced up her spine. It sort of reminded her of Watertown — boarded-up storefronts, marred facades of hollow buildings. She shook the thought out of her head and soldiered on. 

“So this is it, eh?” She’d sort of expected more. Or maybe less. She wasn’t sure. 

“Yep,” Jack sighed. “If ever a place had a reason to be haunted, it’s Dochas.”

“Really?” Ryan paused, glancing nervously at Yaz.

“I’d rather take my chances with ghosts than Daleks,” Yaz dismissed him, following River down a small embankment toward the last building left standing — and “standing” was almost too strong a word.

“Or Harry and his lot,” added Donna. Beside her, Clara had been quiet. Dochas wasn't the only haunted thing. Donna gave her hand a squeeze.

“It’s a shame about Harry,” Graham mused, more to himself than anything.

“Did you know him?” asked Grace. 

“Once. A long time ago.” 

“And he was different?” 

“He was just a lad,” Graham rubbed his hands together as a chilly wind blew right through him. “It was a whole different lifetime.” 

Grace kept close to him as they made their way down toward River. She’d taken the bag of time weapons from Jack and had started to rummage through them, deep in thought.

De-mat guns. Standstills. The Contradiction. Chronic tripwire. Sonic bombs. It was a puzzle and she had all the pieces, but she couldn’t quite get them to fit together. She made a face, and Jack put a hand on her shoulder.

“What are you thinking?” he asked her, all-too-aware of the way Ianto was watching them. He didn’t trust her. And he was beginning to wonder why Jack did.

“I’m thinking that we’re just a handful of people up against a regime that has dominated half the universe,” she sighed. 

“Yeah,” Jack paused for a beat, and then grinned. “Exhilarating, isn’t it?” 

River snorted. “Normally I’d think so.” 

“But now?” 

River straightened up and stretched.

“Now I just don’t want anyone else to lose someone they care for,” her shoulders slumped as she caught eyes with Ianto, and as she looked back at Jack, she felt sick with some sort of anticipatory grief. “But I don’t know how to stop it happening.” 

“You’re not responsible for other people’s heartache,” he put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t be stupid.”

“If I might make a suggestion,” Ianto interjected. “We ought to pick one of these buildings and get inside.” His eyes trailed up to the sky. Distant thunder made a low and threatening sound. 

“I think he’s right,” Clara agreed. “What about that one?” 

Most of the buildings didn’t seem to have much left of the structures they once were. There were chimneys climbing up from piles of plywood and brick, or front doors that led to vacant lots. But one structure seemed to have fared rather well — it was tall and steepled, made of concrete rather than wood. At first, River thought it was a church, and she felt dread rise like bile in her throat. But as she took a few steps closer to it, she realised it had been a school — and somehow, that felt worse. 

“Sure beats getting rained on again. Not like it would matter at this point,” moped Donna, shaking the water out of her shoe. 

“You sure it’s empty?” Rose hesitated. “Those Dalek soldiers that burned this place up, they could still be here, yeah?” 

There was a pause. Everyone seemed to agree that she had a point.

“No one’s here,” River stated with finality, and all eyes turned to her. 

“How do you know?” asked Yaz. 

River could hear her thinking away, trust waltzing around in her mind with doubt and all sorts of other complicated teenage things. Graham was thinking about Harry. Ryan was wishing he still had some biscuits to munch on, and Donna was wishing she had a glass of wine and a warm bed. River listened to the way their thoughts raced around and paused to catch their breath. In a way, it was a familiar feeling. And in a way, it terrified her. 

“I just know,” she slung the bag of weapons over her shoulder and made her way toward the school. She was at something of a crossroads; it felt like there were two souls inside of her, and they were at war. Part of her was angry — livid, really — in a way that words just couldn’t describe. She wanted to take a rusted knife to the gut of the Dalek empire. To kill it, but to make it slow. That part of her wanted for nothing but revenge in a dozen thirsty, feral little ways. 

Oh yes, she was cross. But the other half of her was just...sad. Lost. Alone. She missed the Doctor, and she missed his stupid jokes and his ridiculous, unbridled confidance in the world. In himself. In her. She missed her father. She missed her mother. She missed all the people she hadn’t met yet, and all the people that had died before she’d ever get the chance. And she was tired. Of losing, of running, of hurting, of trying. Hell, she was just tired of being tired. Half of her just wanted to lie down and close her eyes and wait for someone else to save the day. Or, for the day to end, and for the night to follow with a certain promise of eternity. 

But she was a soldier. She’d never asked for a war, but she was born to break things. Maybe everything she’d been through had been a stepping stone to lead her here, on the brink of the end of the world, with nothing but a pale assortment of weapons and a belly full of rage, and hope, and love. 

She paused in the foyer of the school, taking it in with a sinking feeling. There were desks overturned and scorched and blown to bits. She thought of the children who had once sat there, and she felt like crying. But behind her, Rose had beaten her to it.

“Do you think…” she couldn’t finish the sentence. Clara put a hand on her shoulder.

“Yeah.” 

River thought again about what Jack had said — if ghost towns really existed, Dochas would’ve been among the most haunted. She didn’t believe in ghosts, really — they implied the existence of a soul, and she didn’t really believe in souls, either. But she believed in things that loiter in the air, like a bad smell or an emotion so strong it leaves a stain on a place. Everything ends, but everything lingers. If she listened hard enough, she could hear the residual thoughts of scores of small children, thinking of their mums and dads and teachers and pet cats. If she listened hard enough, she could hear their fear — yes, fear had a sound, like a scream or a shout or the slam of a door. She shut her eyes for a moment and decided it was best if she didn’t listen hard enough. Ever.

“You know,” Ianto cleared his throat. “Dochas means ‘hope’ in Irish Gaelic.” 

“What’s in a name?” Graham muttered solemnly. 

“Names are just what something’s called,” River shrugged. Her name was River Song, and yet, she hated any body of water larger than a bathtub, and she couldn't quite carry a tune. But then again, some people just existed to be contrarians. Devil’s advocates. Walking contradictions. Some people were born to break things, but spent their lives doing their best to fix themselves.

“At least we’re safe here,” Yaz sat down. “For now, anyway.” 

River took a deep breath and made her way to the chalkboard. She plucked a broken stick of chalk up off the ground.

“Alright, class,” she lectured, and all eyes turned to her. If she knew one thing, it was how to command a room. “It’s time to come up with a plan.”


	14. History's Sweetheart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI EVERYONE i literally love you all so much and your comments/kudos are always delightful! i start back at university tomorrow (i'm working as a journalism lecturer while finishing a research degree!) buuuuut I'll still try to keep my Sunday/Monday post schedule!! I've also been outlining another River/Doctor series, so even though this one is nearly finished, stay tuned haha! 
> 
> Hope you're all staying safe and healthy x

The Dalek prison cell was hardly posh. If nothing else, the Watcher fancied himself a man of impeccable taste. He liked nice things. He liked his space ships fast and shiny, and his prison cells ornate, thank you very much. Like Al Capone’s, he thought. America’s most notorious gangster. The Watcher nearly smiled. They were kindred spirits. He’d bet money on it.

But the Daleks lacked his refined outlook. The walls were grim, the floor was grey, and the forcefield keeping his mental prowess at bay was by far the most annoying bit. He didn’t even really mind the torture. Anything they wanted to know, he’d already told them, and so the electric shocks and mind probes were really just for fun. Who ever said the Daleks didn’t know how to party? 

He heard footsteps approaching, dignified and measured, and he stood up, brushing the dust from his knees. 

“Cheers,” he waved pleasantly at the guards — once-human, but their corpses had been repurposed into hollowed-out husks, with an eyestalk jutting neatly out of their skulls. “Have you come to offer me my last rites? For my final meal, I’d take pheasant breast with port wine marinade. And oh, what the hell? A dozen chocolate doughnuts.”

“We need you to do something for us.” 

The Watcher laughed. 

“Now why in the world would I do that? You betrayed me, remember? I brought you River Song. And rumour has it, she got away,” he clicked his teeth. “I never would’ve let her get away. She’s slippery, that one. Like an eel.” He winced at the thought. “Why do you want her, anyway?” 

The guard in front turned toward his companion.

“There was a file discovered in the Dalek pathweb,” the second man began. “At first, it seemed to be a virus. A glitch. But we later learned it was a remnant. A file uploaded from another timeline. Another world. River Song is the girl who saves the Doctor.” 

The Watcher made a thoughtful sound. “Persistent, isn’t she?” He’d expected her to give up about three tragedies ago. But she didn’t. She wouldn’t. Why? He frowned.

“History remembers her fondly,” confirmed the first guard, sounding as bitter as a Dalek agent possibly could. “She is the destroyer of worlds, and the saviour of mankind. She is the girl who fights, and the girl who loses battles so that she may one day win the war.” 

“She’s history’s sweetheart, huh?” remarked the Watcher with a sigh. “It figures.”

“The Daleks require that you help locate her,” said the second man. “And in return, they are willing to offer you full amnesty.” 

“Amnesty, eh?” the Watcher leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. “I don’t want to be a petty little civilian working in your labour yard,” he laughed at the thought. His quest might’ve started noble enough — end the Doctor, avenge the death of the people he’d once loved, and make River Song suffer just for fun. But that was the old Watcher, he thought. He’d been born again somewhere in the rubble of his own destruction. A phoenix drunk on the burning power of his own flame. He didn’t want the simple life anymore. Madness sort of suited him. He wanted to rule. And he told the Dalek guards exactly that.

There was a pause, and then the first guard nodded.

“Very well. If you can lead us to the Professor, you will be granted the rank of fleet admiral.” 

“Fleet admiral,” the Watcher repeated. “I do so love a uniform. And a Time Lord serving as a ranking official in the Dalek military?” he hummed in approval. “That ought to be some sort of first. Maybe they’ll give me a medal. You’ve got yourself a deal.” 

The physical forcefield was the first to fall, and then the telepathic inhibitor. The moment he could, the Watcher sent a burst of mental energy surging through the Dalek soldiers’ heads, and their eyestalks spun out of control. Smoke puffed out of their ears in plumes, and their skin began to bubble around the seams as the metal underneath overheated.

“Any old bloke can melt a mortal mind, but to control the mind of a machine?” the Watcher grinned. “Oh, I really am good! Fleet admiral is a nice offer, lads, but I was thinking something a bit more...in charge.” The red ring around the Dalek solders’ eyestalks had turned purple — the Watcher had always fancied that a colour of royalty. They turned to him and got down to their knees. 

And then they bowed. 

***

The chalkboard was covered from top to bottom in scrawled ideas and diagrams sketched in River’s careful hand. But each one had a bold strikethrough, or a firm “x” crossed over it.

“For the last time,” River groaned through grit teeth. “We can’t use the standstills, unless we absolutely need it — their lifespan is far too short. If the plan gets ten seconds off-course, we’ve blown it.”

“And considering how the last plan went…” Yaz huffed.

“We really aren’t good with strategies,” agreed Ryan.

“No, I’m brilliant with strategies!” River defended. “You lot just can’t stick to a plan.” 

“It isn’t their fault that your plan was doomed to fail,” hissed Ianto. “But then again, maybe failure was your plan all along.” 

River lifted a skeptical, lethal brow.

“Would you like to clarify what you mean by that? Or would you prefer to keep your bones inside your body?” 

“C’mon, c’mon,” Jack stood in between them, putting a hand on either of their shoulders. “We have to stick together.” 

“I’m just saying,” Ianto held up his hands in defense. “After what Amy did—” 

“She didn’t do anything!” River lunged toward him, but Graham held her back. 

“You don’t know that!” 

“I do know it!” she shouted. “I know it because it was the last thing my father ever told me. My mum didn’t do it! He did!” 

Only after the words had left her lips did she realise that it wasn’t the victory it had been in her head. It didn’t really matter to Ianto’s narrative which of her parents had betrayed the Resistance. She was still the daughter of a traitor. All eyes had fallen to River, and Jack dropped his head into his hands.

“So much for making a plan, I guess,” he groaned. And to think, Ianto and River were almost the first of his past lovers to get along with each other.

“River, what do you mean?” Yaz took a step closer.

“It doesn’t matter,” sniffed Ianto. 

“Yes, it does,” Graham insisted. “Rory seemed like he was on our side.” 

“You don’t understand,” River accused them all. “It isn’t about sides. Good and evil. Right and wrong. That’s such a black and white way of seeing the world! There are some things that go beyond morality, beyond law, beyond loyalty and righteousness. Love is one of those things,” River shook herself free from Graham’s grasp. “When you love someone so much it hurts, so much that you know you would let the universe smolder if it meant saving them, so much that you’d wait years for them — decades, centuries — good and evil are just these...these external things that live outside. What he did was wrong, but if you can’t understand why he did it, then you’ve clearly never loved anyone like he loved Amy Pond. Like I love the Doctor.” 

It was a messy and imperfect love, but it was love. And love was the only thing that was real. It was a fire burning out of control, and playing with fire was the easiest way to get burned. But without it, she was cold. And she’d realised a long while back that she’d rather burn than feel nothing at all.

“You’d betray the universe for the Doctor?” Rose looked at River with a silent understanding, but something more, too. An empathy. An envy. A guilt. 

River shook her head. “No,” she confessed, and it was true what they said — the truth hurt. “He wouldn’t want me to. But there was a time when I would’ve done, nonetheless. And I can understand doing terrible things to protect the ones you care for. I can’t justify it. I can’t condone it. I can’t say it’s good or okay or alright. But I can say that I understand it. Intimately so.”

The room was quiet and deep in thought. Finally, Yaz cleared her throat, and all eyes turned to her.

“I think River is right,” she looked at her friend and gave her a small nod. “And we don’t gain anything from judging each other and pointing fingers. What’s done is done.” 

“And what’s more,” added Clara. “Rory might’ve done some bad things, but his last act was one of self-sacrifice and courage. That has to mean something, eh?” 

“Yeah, it means something. River, I apologise,” Ianto said, hardly genuine, but knowing enough to see that he was outnumbered. “If you’ll excuse me.” 

He turned on his heels and exited the school onto the dingy front porch. Jack started to go after him, but River put a hand on his chest. She didn’t need anyone fighting her battles for her. Not anymore. Not ever again. 

“I’ll talk to him,” she told the room, who quietly pretended to go about their business. But she could feel their stares burning holes in her back as she made her way outside, and she could practically feel the tension as they strained to hear whatever came next. 

It was the same everywhere, no matter the situation. People could smell tension a mile away, and they always wanted to look. To watch. To see. They’d rubberneck on the motorway to catch a glimpse of a smoldering wreckage. They’d push their curtains aside in the shadow of flashing lights to watch the ambulance, the firetruck, the police car. They’d pretend to be working when their ears were straining to hear about the next big conflict. It’s like the whole universe thrived on war. Maybe that’s why things had gotten so bad. 

River had thought herself down a rabbit hole, and she almost forgot why she’d walked outside in the first place. But when she spotted Ianto sitting on the steps, she sighed and took a seat beside him.

“You don’t trust me.” It wasn’t a question.

He made a noise caught somewhere in the back of his throat. River couldn’t tell if he was amused or annoyed — or both.

“Why would I trust you?” he looked at her once, and then at his shoes. “Because you’re a pretty girl with sad eyes and a tragic backstory? So’s every lass that’s ever worked at Torchwood.” 

“Hm,” River sighed. “I don’t blame you. For not trusting me, I mean.” She flopped down onto her back and stared up at the sky. There used to be stars there. Millions of millions of stars, all looking back at her. But now, it was like the sky had shut its eyes, like it was standing still and holding its breath. Something about it made her feel so alone. “It’s a mean old world out there. I wouldn’t trust me, either.”

“How do you know Jack?” Ianto asked out of the blue, and River sat up, staring him down.

“Is that what this is about? You’re worried I’ll steal your man?” 

Ianto laughed. “Hardly. You’re not his type.” 

Well, I was his type when we shagged on the beach, she wanted to say, but decided instead to handle things a bit more...diplomatically.

“We’re both time travelers, he and I,” she told him. “We met a few different times, in a few different ways. Our lives are both — and have always been — extremely complicated. Sometimes, it was just nice to see a familiar face.” 

Ianto nodded thoughtfully. “You know, it’s strange,” he turned to face her. “When I look at Jack, he seems so familiar. Like I’ve known him all my life. But sometimes, in the right light, at the right time, he’s a stranger. Like there are new curves and angles and scars I’ve never noticed before. And then the next day, they’re all gone. Smoothed out. Ironed down.” 

“It isn’t easy, loving someone like him,” River agreed. “He’s a lot like the Doctor. Always moving, always changing, constantly fluctuating between the best person and the worst. The judge, the jury, the executioner, the lover. Sometimes all at once.”

“I don’t envy this Doctor of yours,” Ianto smiled faintly, awkwardly. “I know what it’s like to love someone like that. Someone big, and important, and brave. No matter how close you are to them, there’s still this constant sense that you’re really quite a small part of their world. That if the time came to make a choice — the universe or you — you’d be stardust within the hour. And you can’t fault them for that, of course. But you can still hate it. Hate that you just feel like a stop on a train ride. A motel room. A tragic backstory. A liminal space in their grand, big life,” he faced River, and his smile was gone. In its place was a serious, stony look. 

“Some people are destined for something so important that it seems like everyone has to lay their lives on the line for them. These great people who hold the world in their hands...how many people have died for them? And how many more are fated to die, too? And how, at the end of the day, will these heroes reconcile their greatness with their goodness — or the lack thereof? The blood on their hands?”

For a moment, she thought he was talking about the Doctor, and she nodded. That had started this whole thing, after all. The destruction of Gallifrey. The rage of a grieving man who went mad. To travel with the Doctor was to understand the burden of sacrifice. To love him was to shoulder it.

But she froze when she realised he wasn’t talking about the Doctor. Or even about Jack. He was talking about her.

Ianto stood up, leaving River to sit in a stunned sort of silence. But after a pause, she stood up too and grabbed his arm.

“You don’t know me,” she hissed.

“Don’t I?” 

“No,” River insisted, voice laced with an angry tremolo. “And you don’t know the Doctor. It’s complicated with him and me.” If River had been a tad more cruel, she might’ve mentioned to Ianto that he was dead in the proper reality. That his breaths were numbered. That the precious life he so desperately clung to was barely a fleeting dream. But Jack was her friend — that was his problem. 

She turned away, ready to storm back inside and come up with some brilliant and unshakable plan in the time it took her to reach for the chalk, but something stopped her. Forming in the back of her head was a dull ache, working its way through her skull with all the urgency of a rusty nail. By the time it reached her temple, it was sharp and red-hot and blinding, and she dropped to her knees, cradling her head in her arms. 

“Dramatic, are we?” Ianto glanced at her, but did a double take. “River? You alright?” 

Her vision had gone cloudy around the edges, and something pulled her out of herself. When she opened her eyes, she was standing in a field dotted with small yellow flowers. They bowed in a soft, sunny breeze, and before River could even remember how to panic, she looked up to find the Watcher standing a few paces ahead, facing away from her. And then panic didn’t even begin to cut it.

“What the hell is this!?” she demanded, reaching for his shoulder. She forced him to turn to her, but stumbled backward at the sight waiting there — instead of his blonde curls and sharp cheekbones, there was a skull whose flesh had long since rotted away. The bones crumbled to dust and the wind carried them away; the Watcher’s ornate Gallifreyan robes slumped to a dirty pile on the ground, and behind her, River heard him laugh.

She whipped around to face him — the proper him, in the flesh — and she cursed.

“Gotcha,” he winked. “Did I scare you?”

“Oh, piss off!”

“I just thought we ought to talk privately,” he snapped his fingers and a picnic table appeared. He took a seat, and gestured for River to do the same. “Welcome to my head. I run the show, here.” 

He cleared his throat and made a vague hand gesture that seemed only for show, and River found herself frozen in her seat. She struggled against her invisible binds, eyes unwavering and firm in their hate-fueled, narrow stare. She realised then that she blamed him. Yes, for the world he’d ruined, and yes, for the Doctor he’d banished to the edge of time, but also for the death of Rory Williams. For the betrayal in the City Centre. 

“Oh, it isn’t my fault,” he read her thoughts, pouting theatrically. “I didn’t kill your father. And for what it’s worth, the Daleks turned on me, too. Tortured me something awful.” 

“I’ll kill you,” she said coolly, simply stating a fact. “It’ll be slow and painful. And I’ll savour every last minute of it.” 

“Yes, they turned on me,” he hummed, ignoring her threats. “But that’s the beauty of telepathy, River. You can do things you haven’t even started to dream of yet. Total control over man and machine. Over nature.” He closed his fist, and a distant cliff face fell into a distant sea with a ripple that shook River where she stood. “Don’t you understand?” 

He interpreted River’s steely silence as a no.

“Mental power is energy, dear. And energy is life, both natural and artificial. I weaseled my way into the Dalek’s cute little hive mind, and now, they bow to me.” 

River’s eyes went wide.

“You stupid, stupid man.” 

“Aw, I thought you’d be impressed,” he feigned injury. 

“It’s only a matter of time until something goes wrong, and since mental links are a two-way street, the Daleks will have every last bit of information in your head. Time Lord history. Gallifreyan secrets,” she tried to gesture, but her arms remained locked at her sides. “Everything in my head, too, since you’ve taken all that! They’ll have it all!” 

“You assume something will go wrong,” he shrugged. “I don’t make mistakes.” 

“You walked into a Dalek’s trap!”

He thought for a moment. “Fine. I don’t make mistakes twice.” 

River groaned in frustration. “You didn’t bring me here to show off. Even you’re not that theatrical.” 

“You’re right,” he stood up. “I brought you here to offer you an ultimatum.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” 

“No, no, I’m serious. As serious as a heart attack. As serious as a Dalek invasion!” he laughed. “Listen, Miss Song, you’re a talented telepath. I couldn’t hold you in this reality if you weren’t — your mind is doing just as much work as mine,” he paused. “Sorry about the headache. With practice, that’ll fade.” 

River winced as her forehead gave a throb.

“But regardless,” the Watcher paced. “With the Dalek fleet under my control, the possibilities are limitless. But I need your skill to maintain order.” 

“You want me to help you?” River scoffed. “You told me once that I didn’t matter to the universe.” 

“Clearly, I was wrong,” he smiled pleasantly. “I can admit when I’ve misjudged.”

“You took everything I’ve ever loved from me,” she accused him. “You’ve put me through hell. You took my husband away. My mother. My father. My world! And now you have the gall to ask for my help!?” her voice cracked. “Watcher, I’d sooner die. I’d sooner die a thousand terrible deaths than live a life shared with you.” 

He clicked his teeth. “You’re wrong. I haven’t taken everything. Not yet.” He snapped his fingers, and an ornate picture frame blurred into focus, floating in thin air. In it, he could see Jack, Yaz, Ryan, Graham and the rest of their small gang standing worriedly over her unconscious physical form. Her stomach lurched with anxiety.

“If you harm a single hair on any of their heads…” 

“You’ll what?” he taunted. “River, if I think hard enough, I could literally turn your mind into mush right now. You don’t have the upperhand. But you do have a choice,” he stood behind her, so close she could feel his breath warm against the back of her neck. She shuddered. “You can join me, Miss Song, and I’ll let all your little friends live. Maybe I’ll even let you visit with the Doctor.” 

That got her attention. Her breath caught in her throat.

“I knew that might pique your interest,” he gave her head a condescending pat. “So yes. You can join me, or you can refuse, and my Dalek agents — who are currently closing in on Dochas — will burn your mates alive.” He grabbed her hair and with a forceful yank, he forced her toward the picture frame. “And you’ll die with them. Last, because I’ll make you watch.”

River found that she could move again, and she leapt to her feet. Fists clenched in rage at her sides, she stared into the picture frame with wet eyes, watching the way Yaz and Ryan fretted over her. The way Graham rested a damp towel against her cheek. The way Jack cradled her head in his lap and held firmly onto Ianto’s hand. Everyone else moved in clockwork ways, living, breathing, unaware. 

What would the Doctor do? 

The Doctor had destroyed a world to save another. He’d let innocent people die — people he’d known, people he’d loved, people he’d never meet at all and now never would. And the ghosts of a million, million strangers haunted him every night; he laid awake tossing and turning, unable to hide from the prying eyes of the dead.

But despite all this, River knew his soul — and she didn’t really even believe in souls. She knew deep down that he was good, and that when the time came, he always did what was right, or at least, he tried to. She couldn’t say so much about herself. But she thought of what Ianto had said to her: “And how, at the end of the day, will these heroes reconcile their greatness with their goodness — or the lack thereof? The blood on their hands?” She took a deep breath and slumped back down onto the bench, shutting her eyes. 

“Have you made a decision?” the Watcher sat down beside her, an arm around her waist. Lips pursed, she nodded. 

“Yes,” she whispered. “I believe I have.”

***

“What’d you do to her, Ianto?” Clara knelt at River’s side, giving her cheek a poke. 

“Nothing!” cried Ianto for the third time in the last five minutes. “She was just standing there, and then she fainted!” 

“I reckon talking to you has that effect on a lot of people,” muttered Donna.

“I think she’s coming around!” Yaz helped Jack sit River up against the schoolhouse’s exterior. Ryan tilted a sip of water into her mouth, and River drank graciously. 

“Hey!” Jack nudged her. “What happened there?” 

“The Watcher,” she blinked, dazed. It all felt very far away. Part of her hoped it was a dream, but she could feel a faint vibration in the Earth, a pale shadow over the distant trees. It had been real.

“Is he coming?” the colour drained from Rose’s cheeks.

River shook her head. “He’s already here.”


	15. The Edge of Time

“What do you mean!?” Yaz cried, following River as she stood up and made her way into the schoolhouse.

“Shut up,” River hadn’t meant to sound rude. “I have to think.” 

She couldn’t think in the Watcher’s head. He would hear everything, he would see any plan coming from a mile away. Two options. Join or die. No. There had to be another choice. There was always another choice. There was always a way out. 

“River!” Ryan called, rushing in after them. Behind him came the others. “What’s going on?” 

“The Watcher’s troops are closing in on Dochas,” she took a breath to keep herself calm. “He’s got control of the Daleks. It’s a long story and we really don’t have the time!” In the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of the knapsack filled with assorted gadgets. “But we do have the time weapons.” 

She picked up the bag and began to rummage through it. She slipped the Contradiction into her pocket right as something exploded outside.

“They’re here!” Grace peered out the window. “About a dozen Daleks, and—” she paused, stunned. “Oh, no.” 

“What?” Clara rushed to the window, too, and Donna and Rose weren’t far behind. 

“Bloody hell,” whispered Rose. “Is that…” 

“Harry,” the name left Donna’s lips like a prayer. “Gwen. And…” 

River joined them at the window and wished immediately that she didn’t. Standing in between two people she’d never seen before in her life — Harry and Gwen, presumably — was Rory. 

She backed away slowly, clutching her chest as her hearts beat out of control. Was this a heart attack? Could Time Lords have heart attacks? Maybe not, but humans could, and she was half human, so there was that. And oh, this was a rubbish time to go into cardiac arrest! She was busy!

“River, breathe!” Jack slapped her square in the back, and she let out a gasp of air she hadn’t realised had been trapped in her lungs. Her chest suddenly felt a great deal better. “That isn’t Rory. Not really. Remember that.”

She nodded weakly, catching her breath. “Right. You’re right.” 

“Hello? Anybody home?” sang the Watcher, making his way through the ruined city. He knocked rhythmically on the door of the school. “River, come out and play! Your father says it’s alright.” 

“Cheeky bastard,” muttered Ianto. 

River made her way to the door, but Yaz caught her arm. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Trust me,” River urged. “I promise you — I promise all of you — that no one else is going to die here. Give me the de-mat gun.”

Hesitantly, Yaz reached into the bag and handed it to her. 

“How’d he find us?” Ryan slumped against the wall. “I thought that’s why we blew up the vortex things.” 

“I’m afraid that’s my fault,” River admitted, committing to this new telling-the-truth thing. She caught Ianto’s judgemental eye, and she sighed. “I know. I know. In a way, Ianto, you were always right. I just didn’t know it yet. Failure is my plan.” 

“What?” Ianto’s scorn vanished. “River, don’t—” 

“Trust me,” she repeated. “And stay inside.” 

“Wait,” Jack jogged to catch up with her. As she turned to tell him there was no use stopping her, she realised that wasn’t what he’d been after. He knew her better than all that. Jack handed her his old-fashioned gun and bowed his head the slightest bit. “You’ll need this, too.” 

River met his stare, and in the second it took her to turn away, they shared a sort of intimacy that might not have even had a name.

She made her way outside to stand on the school's battered porch alone, facing an army. But she was armed to the teeth; the knapsack was strapped to her back, and in one hand, she held Jack’s Colt 45. In the other — the de-mat gun. The ground beneath her feet was riddled with rot and stained with a history that never should’ve been. And the dirt on which the Watcher stood made plumes when the wind blew. If life had been more like a movie, this would’ve been the Wild American West. All that was missing was a tumbleweed and an old saloon.

“I see you’ve brought friends,” River said to the Watcher, her stare flickering to Rory. “Old friends.” 

“I can fix him,” the Watcher said. “Remember that. I control the Daleks.”

He looked at Rory long and hard, and slowly, the eyestalk slowly retracted. Dazed, Rory looked around.

“How the hell did I get here?” he turned to see River, and his face softened. “You made it out.” 

Whatever had been left of River’s resolve had been knocked off the altar once again, and it shattered when she hit rock bottom. But she didn’t waver — aside from the faint twitch in her eye, she was unshaken.

“Father,” she did her best to keep her voice even. “You died.” 

“Hm,” Rory pondered this. “I guess I did.” 

“This is a trick,” she pointed Jack’s gun square at the Watcher. “A cruel trick.” 

“But I feel alive,” insisted Rory. “River, please listen to me. You can make it out of this alive, too.”

“You’re his puppet,” she shook her head. “He's talking through you. It’s a trick.” 

“You made your choice,” Rory seemed pained. “But reconsider, Melody. Listen to your Father. The Watcher can save you.” He made a movement toward her, and River jerked the gun in his direction.

“Not another step closer!” 

Rory nodded and held up his hands in submission. “I just have one question,” his stare flickered toward the faces in the schoolhouse windows. “Why don’t you let them go? You could have everything, River, and all you have to do is let them go.”

A single tear slipped down River’s cheek. “I love them.” Her stare hardened as she turned toward the Watcher. “That’s the one thing you don’t understand, isn’t it? Love. You said you did this for your family. And then you had them. And it wasn’t enough. Nothing you’ve ever done has been for love. It’s been for power, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. You think my love is a weakness that you can exploit, don’t you? My love for the Doctor. My love for my father. My love for my friends. But you’re wrong.” Her voice shook — her admission felt raw and vulnerable, but most importantly, it felt true. And somehow, that was the most frightening part. 

“Love is not a weakness. I used to think it was, but it isn’t,” she looked at Rory with an agonizing guilt and nameless horror, but with love, too. Strange, how it all existed in the same place at the same time. Every emotion, rubbed red and raw. “Even if it hurts. Especially because it hurts. Don’t you get it? It’s easy to be alone. It’s easy to push everyone away, because alone is safe. But love opens you up to pain and loss and grief. The Doctor once said that it is a rare and special thing to love something so desperately that it hurts to see it go, and I reckon he was right. But that rare and special thing, Watcher, is something you’re incapable of experiencing. And for that, I pity you.” 

Something seemed to change behind Rory’s hollowed eyes, like something buried deep inside of him was still alive, still fighting. But the Watcher turned to him quickly, and whatever flame had been there was promptly snuffed out. The stalk between his eyes reemerged and twitched over toward the school. It wavered there, ready and awaiting command.

“I’ll prove to you that love is weak,” the Watcher laughed cruelly. “That love dissipates. Love bites. A smile is just a thing with teeth. You could have power. Absolute power, yes. But you’d give it up for love?” He scoffed. “Love is nothing. But survival is everything. And you could all survive. Or, your dear old daddy here could blow up that building and everyone inside, and then slit your throat.”

There was an ache in River’s chest like nothing else. With a pained, shaky exhale, she shook her head. “He won’t do it. I won’t let him.” 

“Incorrect,” said Rory, voice tinny and firm. “I serve the Watcher now. I shall obey his orders.” 

“I know,” River said softly. She approached him without caution, without fear, without doubt. She touched his shoulder and bit back tears. “I know this isn’t you. I know that you would never hurt someone on purpose. I know how much you care about people, Father.” 

“Incorrect,” repeated Rory. “Daleks do not experience the sensation of care.” 

“Kill them, Rory.” 

“No,” River whispered. As Rory aimed at the school, she felt the weight of Jack’s Colt-45 cold against her fingers, and it was becoming more and more obvious what she had to do with it. It made her feel a sickness she’d only experienced once before, in an astronaut suit on the Plain of Sighs. She swallowed the bile down and cleared her throat. 

“My father died to save me. Before he died, he wrote me a letter,” speaking quickly, urgently, desperately, she stood in front of him while his weapon powered up, fighting the urge to run as its radiant heat warmed the air around her. “And in that letter, he wrote, ‘Love is the only thing that’s real. Everything else is secondary. Love your friends and let them love you. In a world that hates so desperately, to love is a radical act of courage. And you’re going to have to be very, very brave,’” her lower lip trembled as she steadied her firing arm and aimed it squarely at Rory’s head. When she spoke again, her voice was little more than a whisper. “And this is me being brave.”

She closed her eyes, and she pulled the trigger. It felt like the world moved in slow motion. A film on the telly at half speed, slowed for affect. But in the time it took her to realise she’d shut her eyes at all — and to find the gall to reopen them — it was over. She was afraid to look, to see what she’d done, and when she did, she felt nauseous and numb in a way that hurt, like pins and needles all over. Ice in her veins, fire in her heart.

With an electric hiss, Rory dropped to the ground, the mechanics and metals grinding gears inside his hollowed skin. He twitched and sparked until finally, his limbs came to a stiff standstill and his eyes went dark in a strange, sad way. The stalk had settled against the ground, motionless except for the occasional short-circuited quivver.

River looked at him, and then at the gun smoking in her hand. Realising with horror just what she'd done, she unclenched her white-knuckled grip and the weapon clattered to the ground. 

The Watched clapped. “Patricide! I didn’t think you had it in you, River. You really are a psychopath.” 

Breathing hard, River pointed the gun at him. 

“I know the Gallifreyans don’t believe in a God, Watcher, but you better make peace with something out there, because it’s going to take a whole lot to save you from me.” 

“What, are you going to shoot me?” he taunted. “I’ll regenerate.” 

“I’m not going to shoot you,” she lowered her weapon and sniffled. “Can’t say the same for them, though.” 

Every Dalek slowly turned to aim their weapons at the Watcher. One by one, little glowing purple lights turned a blinding white, like tiny suns were trying to force their way out. 

“What are you doing?” the Watcher cursed them. “I’m your master! Me! Shoot her!” 

The Daleks were eerily quiet. Harry and Gwen marched stiffly toward him, too. River smirked madly.

“Gotcha,” she mocked. “Did I scare you?” 

“How are you doing this?” 

“You said it yourself,” she took a step toward him. “I’m a very gifted telepath. And you’ve made me angry, Watcher. You’ll regret that.”

This is what she’d been conditioned to be — someone’s worst nightmare, a force of nature, a danger that couldn’t be stopped. She was powerful. She was terrified. It was a sickening sort of low, she thought, to reach into someone’s mind and control them — even if it was a Dalek. A puppet on a string. A remote-control consciousness. 

It was the great Chinese strategist Sun Tzu who had said, _to know your enemy, you must become your enemy._ And she had become the Watcher. And she hated herself for it. But it was necessary. 

Every Dalek around the world had powered down — the labour yards in Leadworth ground to a halt. The factories in London stood still. And the streets of Dochas held their breath.

“Well I’ll be damned,” the Watcher let out a nervous laugh. “I didn’t expect you to take a play from my book. Doesn’t that disgust you? Doesn’t it make you sick with yourself?” 

“Yes,” River nodded, and the Daleks approaching the Watcher paused. “But war is dirty. There aren’t any winners. Only a side that loses less. And I refuse to lose anyone else.” 

“What do you know of war?” The Watcher snarled. “I fought in a war bigger than anything you can imagine!” 

“I know that I’m fighting in one now,” River’s hands shook. Her head felt full and foggy and sore. She knew she couldn’t keep this up forever. “And I know that if you look closely enough, war is sometimes a love story. You know war, yes, but you’ll always lose because you don’t know love. And that’s the one thing in the universe worth fighting for. Living for. Dying for.” She glanced at the mechanical Rory that had very nearly fooled her, and she swallowed the lump in her throat. 

“Love, love, love!” he cried. “It’s only pretty poetry!” 

The Watcher sat down on the dirt, legs crossed. “But I know you can’t maintain your mental hold on things for very long. You’re strong, yes, but you’re untrained. And you’re frightened. And you’re tired.” He feigned sympathy. “Why don’t you rest, little girl?” 

“Never underestimate the creativity and courage of little girls,” River growled, holding up the de-mat device. 

“I thought you said you weren’t going to shoot me?” The Watcher stood up and dusted off his coat. If he was going to die, he was going to die with dignity. And he was going to take her with him, one way or another.

But then she did something he hadn’t counted on.

She pressed the weapon into her own stomach and took a deep breath.

“I’m not going to shoot you. And I’m not going to kill you. Because I meant what I said — no one is going to die here today. No one else is going to die in my name,” she glanced back at the schoolhouse, and wondered briefly if anyone was listening. “Because if the roles were reversed, you’d kill me without thinking twice. But I’m not you. I’m better.”

“No. You’re just a coward,” the Watcher snarled. “You’re just—”

“Checkmate!” River cried, and she pulled the trigger.

***

The first thing the Doctor noticed was that he was alive. Well, that was a good sign. Very good.

His hearts beat in his chest, a steady and healthy rhythm, and his lungs felt perfectly ordinary when he took one deep breath after another. Slowly, he sat up. 

The second thing he noticed was that the world around him was...weird. Well, weird was a vague and broad word, and sometimes, it was a properly good word. A lot of people told him he was a bit weird himself. Just about everyone he’d ever liked had been weird. But this world was weird in a newer, weirder way. 

He was sitting in a field of lush green grass dotted with summertime flowers and bulbous bumblebees minding their business, but a few metres away, that lush, green grass thinned and turned yellow, and beyond that, it was brown and shriveled, dead as a doornail, dead as dead gets. Farther yet, it was coated in snow. And then it was green and lush all over again, and the pattern went on as far as he could see. The four seasons, just like Vivaldi had written them, in an endless cycle of life and death and rebirth. 

The sky overhead was equally weird; it was a clear and perfect blue, unrendered, without a cloud to cast a shadow, but at the same time, it was night, with far too few stars all arranged in patterns that didn’t make any sense at all. And beyond the patch of nighttime, there was a storm brewing, and beyond that patch of bad weather, the clouds began to dissipate, and the sun was rising. It was like a patchwork quilt of weather, a checkerboard of sunrises and sunsets and nighttimes and broad daylight. As if all of natural time was happening at once, just a few metres apart — or perhaps not at all. 

The Doctor clambered to his feet and took a step, mindful of the way the ground felt beneath his feet. He did a little jump; the gravity was there, and it was real. Not that synthetic and tinny rubbish that felt almost motion sick in its weight. It was the real, genuine, authentic creme-de-la-creme of gravity — and that meant he was somewhere. 

Well, somewhere didn’t really narrow it down. Everyone was somewhere, even the people who claimed to be lost. Especially the people who claimed to be lost. He carefully made his way into a stretch of yellow grass, where he figured it was meant to be raining. The trouble was, the raindrops had stopped midair, frozen in time and space, just sort of...hanging there. Christmas tree ornaments with no branches to cling to. He reached out and touched one, and just as his fingertip made contact, it shattered like glass, and the shards drifted upward toward the cloudy evening sky. Eventually, they were out of sight, and a new, plump raindrop appeared in its place, frozen and still and whole once again.

“That’s curious,” muttered the Doctor. “And not a good sort of curious, either.” 

He shut his eyes and tried to rub the headache out of his temples. He didn’t remember much about how he’d got there; in fact, he didn’t remember anything at all. One minute, he was on his way to Stormcage to see River, and the next…

River.

Oh, no. 

Her words came back to him, stuck in his mind like a broken record on repeat. The most dangerous secret in the universe. An unspeakable truth. But worse yet were the things he’d said to her. He hadn’t meant them. He’d only meant to make her cross enough to let him go off and put things right. But that hadn’t quite gone to plan, either. In fact, he’d rather made a mess of things. And he couldn’t even remember how. 

Something in his periphery caught his eye, and he turned to face whatever had shuffled just out of sight. To his surprise, he spotted the silhouette of his own lanky form, craning his head to look behind it at a silhouette of his own lanky form, too. Another timeless cycle. Funhouse mirrors without the fun. Or the mirrors. Or the house. Maybe that was a rubbish comparison after all.

This, thought the Doctor, was going to be very difficult to fix. 

Out of pure and thin air came an electric sizzle, and then a snap so loud it echoed through every time-locked patch of nothingness, like someone had pulled back some sort of temporal elastic and let it rip. Suddenly, the sky unzipped itself and spat out a person — at least, he hoped it was a person, and not a corpse — who landed with a dull thud in the rainy zone a few paces away. All the raindrops scattered, and River Song arose carefully amid the shards of floating glass.

Floating glass? River suspected it could’ve been worse. She reached out to touch one and cursed as it cut her finger. At least she was alive, she thought, watching a ruby red drop of blood seep out from her wound. She wiped the blood on her trousers and rubbed a sore spot on her head — had she hit it? She couldn’t remember. She picked up the de-mat gun, discarded in the grass, and tucked it into her pocket for safe keeping. And the contradiction was still there. Good, she thought. Step one had gone off without a hitch. At least, she reckoned it was step one now. She was sort of making things up as she went along. She hadn’t expected to live this far. And she still wasn’t really certain that she had.

And then she saw him. He was standing there, just far enough away to look small, and he was watching her curiously. As if he couldn’t quite believe she was there. 

Everything that she’d been swallowing down — all the horror, all the fear, all the shame, all the guilt — worked its way to the surface, and for a beat, there was nothing else. Just them. Their movie moment. Except it wasn’t a movie. It was real, and it was sort of uniquely terrible. But in a good way. Maybe.

“Doctor!” she screamed, getting a running start and leaping into his arms with such force they both tumbled down into a patch of grass. She realised she was happy to see him, and then she realised she’d nearly forgotten what happy felt like. And that realisation made her feel a bit sad. It was all very circular, she thought.

“River!?” he hugged her as she cried, giving her short hair a confused tousle. “What the hell happened to you!?” 

“It’s a long story!” she sniffled into his shoulder. “I-it’s a long and sad story, but you’re here! I did it! I found you!” she pulled away just enough to look at him, cupping his cheek. “Oh, I found you, my stupid, stupid Doctor.” She hugged him again, so tight he could hardly breathe, muttering a steady mantra of ‘I love you’ and ‘I found you,’ a broken record on repeat.

“You never lost me,” the Doctor kissed her, and she kissed him back. There they were, just a boy and a girl on the edge of time. All they needed was a picnic basket and it would’ve been sort of romantic, aside from the bit about the end of the world.

“Don’t cry, sweetie.” He ran a thumb across her tender cheekbone, tracing a bruise, and then he followed the damage down to her arms, to the rips in her jumpsuit, frowning at the swollen burns underneath. “I’ve got you, now.”

“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” River confessed, letting her stony facade crumble into his arms. “I thought I was alone. My father said I’m never alone,” she wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “But oh, Doctor, it sure did feel like I was. I couldn’t imagine a universe without you, and then I saw it, and it was horrid.”

“I’m here, now,” he promised her. “And I won’t ever leave again.” 

“I’ve done things,” she looked at her bruised knuckles and then up at the Doctor. “Things that made me no better than him. Than the Watcher, I mean.” She thought of the weight of Jack’s Colt 45 in her hand, and the weight of the world on her shoulders as her mind reached out and invaded a civilisation. She squeezed her eyes shut. “I shot my father!”

This took the Doctor aback for a moment, but he quickly recovered and held her close.

“You’re better than anyone I’ve ever known,” he put a hand on either of her shoulders and gave her a gentle shake. “What we do matters less than why we do it. So whatever you’ve done, River, it’s okay.”

In that timeless place, she confessed her sins without words — with looks, with gestures, with tears. And the Doctor listened in every way he knew how. He held her in his arms for what could’ve been forever or thirty seconds — time passed in funny ways when it didn’t really exist. And finally, she pulled herself away, smoothed out the wrinkles in her clothes, and squared her shoulders. She was a soldier. And they were at war.

“I’m alright,” she insisted, tucking a few stray curls behind her ears. She sucked in a deep breath and let it out, nice and slow. “I’m alright.” 

“I know you are,” he smiled faintly, but it quickly faded. “How long have I been gone?” 

“Not very long for me. A week or so, maybe? But for the rest of the world...it’s sort of...it’s complicated.” 

He heaved a heavy sigh. “Isn’t it always? Can you tell me what happened?” 

“I want to tell you everything. But it’ll be easier this way,” River tilted her head against his, but the Doctor pulled back.

“I thought you weren’t very comfortable with mind things.” 

“A lot has changed,” she assured him. “I think I’ve learned a great deal.”

He nodded and let his head fall against hers, and it was like she’d opened up some sort of dam where thoughts were kept at bay. Everything came flooding out, from her mind into his — the Watcher, the Daleks, Rory, Jack, Ianto, Donna, Rose, Grace, and a slew of faces he didn’t recognise, but still felt like he somehow knew. Oh, it ached. He saw all the faces he tried to forget, but never really could. Not ever.

He saw the world through her eyes, and it was big and dark and grand and sad. Bold. Daring. Cold. Alone. He saw the monsters that lurked beneath her eyelids, distant memories pushed to the back burner by recent horrors. And he saw the words in her journal peel themselves free of her page and speak themselves into his waiting ears. He saw the ceiling of a Dalek prison cell, and he saw Rory Williams slump down to his knees. And he saw him again — a hollowed husk, a puppet, a dummy — dead on the dusty ground in a place called Dochas. But he’d been dead when he arrived there, too. River’s bullet had been an off-switch. Nothing else.

He felt everything she felt, from terror to relief to love to shame. And he felt it as strongly as she did — urgently, desperately, passionately. And by the time she pulled them apart, he was out of breath. He wondered vaguely how she ever caught hers.

“You met Rose. Donna. Grace,” the Doctor nearly whispered. His own lungs felt like an airless vacuum, tight and compacted.

She nodded, hesitantly. “They were important to you.”

It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.” 

“Then why haven’t you ever mentioned them?” 

“Too painful,” he bit his lip to keep it from trembling, and he turned to River with urgency. “I’ll tell you someday. When it hurts less. But I’m—” 

“Don’t say sorry.” She pressed her index finger to his lips. Her hand was trembling. But he thought about their first meeting of the minds back in Watertown, and how she’d nearly drowned him in nightmares. But now, she was in control. 

“I was going to say ‘so proud of you,’” he sniffled. “But I’m sorry, too. We’re going to make this right.” 

River’s chest ached with emotion. No one had ever said that to her before. She swallowed the lump in her throat and dabbed at the corners of her eyes.

“What is this place, Doctor?” In retrospect, she probably should’ve asked that sooner. But in her defense, it had been a rather busy day.

“I don’t know,” he confessed. “It feels like I’ve just got here, too. But you say you’ve been away for awhile.” 

“How’d you get here at all?” 

“I don’t really remember. I was on my way to see you...no! I did see you. And I was leaving…” he thumped himself on the forehead in a failed attempt at jogging his memory. “I don’t know.” 

“That’s alright,” River reckoned not remembering might be for the better. “If it’s important, I’m sure it’ll come back to you.”

She stood up, pulling him with her.

“We aren’t done yet,” she continued. “I don’t know what taking myself out of the timeline has done. All of reality could be collapsing.” 

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” the Doctor reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. River turned to him, looking upset, but when she saw the playful light in his eyes, she couldn’t help but smile.

“Oh, I’ve missed you.” 

“I bet you have!” 

“So, what do you say?” she watched the sun set in one strange square of time, and she watched it rise in another. “You and me against the world?” 

“River Song,” he held her hand. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”


	16. Contradiction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay in posting!!! life is very busy now that its started up again. but here you go!! hope you enjoy :)

“This,” River held up a small, ornate key. “Is the Contradiction.” 

“Blimey,” the Doctor blinked. “I’ve heard of that, yeah, but it was only ever a legend. Something Time Lord parents would threaten if their children didn’t settle down. ‘Don’t make me get the Contradiction and turn this ship around!’” 

River let out a snort of laughter. “Well, it’s real, and it seems like a pretty powerful piece of kit.” 

“And we’re going to use it to save the world?” 

“That’s right.” 

“How, exactly?” 

River pulled the de-mat gun out and held the Contradiction up against its solid metal. The air around the device warped and distorted, and then a keyhole appeared on the barrel of the gun. It glowed a fiery red, and the temporal energy seeping out of it made the hair on River’s arms stand up. 

“Did you mum ever say to you, ‘I brought you into this world, and I can take you out!’” 

The Doctor laughed. “That’s a classic.” 

“And a fact. And it works both ways, too,” River held up her newly modified weapon. “It took you out of this world. And it can bring you back in.”

The Doctor’s eyes went wide. “You think that’ll work?” 

“Well, last time reality was falling to bits, I saved the world by shooting you.” 

“Yeah,” he agreed, still a bit blindsided by this whole plan. “I suppose that’s true.” 

“I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner,” River stared off into the distance. “I was trying too hard. I was so focused on defeating the Watcher, but I think I realised that I can’t beat him at his own game. So I started playing a new one.”

The Doctor smiled proudly. “That’s my girl.”

“He’s always a step ahead. He’s seen the inside of my mind. He knows me better than I know myself,” she pulled a piece of grass absently from the ground, and made a confused sound when a new one sprouted up immediately in its place. “But I had a dream back when I was still on the TARDIS. And in it, my father told me that love is knowing when to save and when to sacrifice. So I thought that maybe sometimes, you have to make sacrifices to save something important. And I did just that,” she looked up at him and smiled sadly. “But I’m worried about what happened to the people I left behind. If reality tore itself apart, if there is no world, if the paradox of it all was just too much — then there’s no them.” She paused. “And I didn’t get to say goodbye.” 

The Doctor nodded understandingly as she laid her head in his lap, staring up at the patchwork sky. 

“But it’s like you said,” he toyed with her hair. “Sacrifice to save. If we’re successful, River, that world would’ve never been real. Just a bad dream,” he kissed her forehead. “And everyone will wake up and go about their normal lives.” 

“But it’ll always be real to me,” she sighed. “It’ll always be out there somewhere. Or in here somewhere,” she tapped her head. “I’ll always remember watching Rory die, even if he’s alive and making supper or something.” She tensed and rubbed her eyes. “I’ll always remember shooting him. I’ll always remember the feeling of total power, controlling the minds of every bloody Dalek on the planet. And I’ll always remember that I sort of...liked it. The power, I mean. What’s that say about me?” she swallowed hard. “My point is, I guess, that I’ll never be able to unfeel any of it. Because I remember it. And so it happened. And so it’s real.”

The Doctor laced their fingers together. “I know the feeling.” 

“Yeah,” River muttered. “If it hurts, let it hurt. It’s a growing pain.” 

The Doctor looked at her fondly. “Where’d you hear that?”

“I read it once,” she shrugged, not really feeling like getting into that right now. Reluctantly, she pulled herself out of his lap and stood, holding the gun firmly in her hand. “Are you ready?” 

“What about you?” the Doctor stood, too. “How will you get out of here?” 

The truth was that River didn’t really know if she could. Maybe the Contradiction only worked once. Maybe it wouldn’t work at all, and she’d kill the man she loved. Again. And then she’d have to live with that forever in this strange limbo made up of primary colours and liminal space. But if there was a chance...if there was a silver of hope — and there always was — she had to do it. Hope springs eternal, she thought. An old Earth phrase. Humans will keep fighting to find fresh cause for optimism. She smiled. Maybe being half human wasn’t so bad after all. 

“I’ll be right behind you,” she said. If it was a lie, it was a tender one, and tender lies were sort of her thing. And it was worth it just to see him smile. She paused. 

“Wait. One more thing.” 

“What—” 

She kissed him ferociously, adoringly, with her arms around his neck and his around her waist. She kissed him like it was the last time she ever would — which might’ve been true, but she didn’t want to think about it. She couldn’t bear it. And he kissed her, too, with a hunger that wasn’t like him, and a finality that absolutely was. 

When River pulled herself away — reluctantly, miserably — she let out a short huff and took both of his hands in hers.

“I love you,” she said firmly, with confidence. “I need you to know that.” 

“I do know it,” he smiled. “And I love you, too.” 

So, thought River. This is what closure feels like.

“Well, sweetie, I never thought I’d say this,” the Doctor took a step back and opened his arms. “But shoot me. And then yourself.” 

River chuckled. “A murder suicide to save the world.” 

“How very fitting.” 

“I’ve only just got you back,” she held up the gun and trained it on his chest. “And here I am, about to make you vanish again.” 

“You’ll be right behind me,” he reminded her. “You and me, River Song. That’s a promise.” 

“Right,” she forced a tight smile. “You and me.” 

She looked him square in the eye, and she saw a universe unfolding there — his blue irises were the cosmos in all their enduring glory, and his pupil, undialated and unafraid, was a black hole sucking her in. He trusted her. She trusted him. If she never saw him again, this how she’d remember him — bold and unafraid and desperately in love.

And he hoped he’d remember her the same way. She looked at the weapon in her hand, and for the first time, really, she felt its power. And it scared her. It took a lot to do that, but the de-mat gun could write people out of the world, or invent them all over again. She realised then, too, that she was about to rebuild the notorious Doctor. And in doing it, she might lose him forever, but that hardly seemed to matter here. She loved him to the point of creation, of invention, of sacrifice. 

She pulled the trigger. The Doctor vanished, and River was on her own. Again. It was almost anticlimactic. That was, until the Contradiction fell from its self-made keyhole, which had closed up like a bad piercing. The moment it hit the ground, it turned into something rotten, coated in a layer of mold and black sludge. Startled, River took a step back and dropped the gun with a short yelp, inspecting her own arm for any signs of decay. When she determined she was alright, she crouched down to watch as the Contradiction bubbled and boiled into a lump of black tar, and finally, turned to dust. There was nothing left of it — the temporal energy had been too much, and it had torn itself apart with the energy seeping into it from the ever-distant vortex. 

She was trapped. 

“You once told me that you didn’t want to be my better half — you wanted to be the person who reminded me I was whole, with or without you,” she spoke into silence, into stillness, into the empty space where he’d stood. “Here’s me, alone and whole.” she smiled despite the dampness stinging her eyes. “I found you, Doctor. And I saved you.”

She’d saved them all. And she didn’t even exist. That was the real contradiction that the little key had unlocked. It wasn’t about opposites or polarities — it was about the unexpected. It was about how things could coexist in strange ways; where there might be an “or,” she could stick an “and.” Happy and sad. Whole and broken. Reality and dreams. Important and forgotten. All at once.

For as long as she sat in the grassy hollow watching the strange reality around her, she didn’t exist. The universe didn’t remember her. And yet, it was there because of her. Because she’d sacrificed. Because she got burned. She wondered briefly about the first person to discover fire. No one would ever know who they were, and though they didn’t know it at the time, they’d changed the world.

Maybe the Doctor wouldn’t remember her. Maybe her parents would’ve had a son. But sometimes, when the wind blew just right and the stars came into alignment, maybe they’d feel just the slightest bit sad — and they’d never quite know why. She’d know, though; it would be because she missed them. And as long as she remembered them, she was real somehow. Somewhere. Lost in a place where vanished things go. A naked soul. But real.

“It’s not so bad,” she told herself. In a way, she almost believed that she’d won. There it was, another contradiction — winning and losing. It was possible to do both at once, and she reckoned that she had. In winning the world she’d lost her love. In saving it, she’s sacrificed herself. 

_Love is knowing when to save and when to sacrifice._

_Love is the only thing that’s real._

She took comfort in that thought. 

River stepped from the lush green grass onto a yellowed lawn dotted with fallen leaves. And then into snow. And then into rain. What a strange place, she thought. All of time had happened all at once before — and ironically, the solution then was to shoot the Doctor then, too. But time had happened differently. Here, it was organised into neat little boxes. Cubes of daylight and cubes of night. Back then, it had sort of looked like the universe spilled its purse. And oddly enough, River had sort of preferred it that way. She liked an honest chaos.

She sat down in the autumn sphere and pulled the old necklace out of her pocket. She popped it open and smiled at her parents. At her mum. At her father.

“At least you get to be with the person you love,” she told the smiling facade of Rory Williams. “And you,” she said to Amy. “Don’t you go dying again. That was really rude, you know. Dad and I could’ve used your help. And the Doctor's going to need you now more than ever.” 

She laid down on her side and closed her fist around the locket. She was tired. Exhausted, really. She didn’t remember the last time she’d slept properly. She reckoned it was time for a good nap. After all, she had all the time in the world.

Just as she’d started to drift off, she felt a low and earthy rumble start from deep in the ground. She sat up quickly, and to her horror, the distant squares of space and time were going dark one by one. And the darkness was closing in. Fast.

“Well, Professor,” she swallowed hard, eyes wide. “This can’t possibly be good.”

***  
“Where the hell did she go!?” cried Jack, rushing outside with his gang in tow. The moment River had vanished, everything had changed.

A wind was blowing, but it wasn’t just any wind. It was the time winds, blowing as the vortex opened up and started to suck them in. It was the kind of wind that always seemed to whip its way through the apocalypse in films about the end times. It was sharp and it was fast, and it nearly knocked him flat back on his arse. He and Ianto held onto each other as if their lives depended on it. In fact, they might’ve. 

“That stupid girl!” cursed the Watcher, stepping over deactivated Dalek soldiers. “It’s a bloody paradox! And it’s tearing the world apart!” 

“I don’t understand!” Yaz called out to Jack. 

“River shot herself with the de-mat gun,” Jack crouched down, inspecting the temporal residue left on the ground in her place. “She took herself out of reality. No River, means the Watcher never learned the Doctor’s name, and if he never learned the Doctor’s name, he never opened the bubble universe and imprisoned the Doctor. And if he never opened the bubble universe, this reality never existed.” 

“Why would River do that!?” cried Rose. With a jolt, she realised Clara had vanished, too. 

“Where’d she go!?” Donna demanded, noticing her disappearance at exactly the same time. “Where the f—”

“This world is ending!” Ianto ducked as a stray plank of wood came flying toward them. “And we’re part of this world. We’re ending, too.”

“Not ending,” Jack corrected him, urgently grappling for either of Ianto’s hands. “You can’t be in two places at once, can you? The time winds are sending people back to where they belong. The proper world. To their old lives. River did it.”

He kissed Ianto, then. It might not’ve been the best time, but it was, without a doubt, the last time. And so he made it count. Kissing as the world fell apart. Kissing as reality chased its tail in circles around itself, as the trees were ripped out by the roots and the clouds fell like lead around them. 

“Donna!” Rose shouted, and everyone turned just in time to see Donna fade from the world in the blink of a tired eye. “She’s gone. Does that mean I’m next!?” 

“Don’t be afraid,” Grace told her. “It’ll be okay. We’re going back to our own times.” 

“But what’s that mean?” Rose wiped her eyes. “I’ll never see you all again?” 

Graham looked at Grace with a pitted stomach; he hadn’t thought of that. 

But by the look on her face, Grace certainly had.

“It’ll be okay,” she hugged Rose tight and close, but soon, she was hugging air. Rose had gone.

“Grace!” Graham reached out to her, and she caught his hand. “I know I haven’t known you for very long, but—” 

And she kissed him. Just a quick peck on the lips, but it was a kiss nonetheless, and Graham was stunned into silence.

“We made a good team,” she smiled. “I wish I got to know you better, Graham.” 

“Yeah,” he blinked, dazed. “Me, too.” 

Grace vanished, and it was almost as if she’d never been there at all. Except she had been. And Graham mourned her as if she’d been there all his life.

“River abandoned us,” Ryan looked at Graham, who looked at the sky as thick, black clouds started to gather and swirl. “We’re going to disappear, too!”

“No,” Yaz corrected. “She saved us!” A smile spread across her face as a familiar groan stood out amid the roar of thunder and the hiss of pouring rain. And out of the thickest, blackest cloud came a ship. It spiraled and sputtered and jerked through the air, like it wanted to be anywhere else. Or, like it’s pilot really didn’t know how to land. Both, Yaz figured, were likely true.

Yaz turned to Jack and Ianto, only to find that they were nowhere in sight. With a twinge of sorrow, she realised she’d never gotten to say goodbye. Maybe it was better that way, she thought. She never fancied herself a fan of endings. Not even happy ones, rare as they were.

The TARDIS knocked the steeple off the school, and the crowd scattered to get out of the way as it tumbled to the ground and sent a wave of mud to coat them. It hit the ground and slid through the muck, until it came to a grinding halt about six inches from where the Watcher cowered. 

“No,” he whispered, scrambling to his feet. 

The ship’s door swung open, and everyone held their breath. From it stepped a bloke Yaz hadn’t anticipated — she’d expected her Doctor, a blonde girl with a penchant for getting into trouble (and a talent for getting out of it). But instead, she watched as the shaggy-haired stranger adjusted his bowtie and looked them each up and down.

He recognised them from River’s mind, and he felt a fondness for them that he couldn’t place. They’d mean a great deal to him someday. That much, at least, was obvious.

“I’m the Doctor,” he introduced. “But you’ve probably already guessed that, and there’s really no time for pleasantries, I’m terribly sorry.” He stuck his index finger in his mouth and popped it out, measuring the wind. “This world is about to collapse in on itself, and when that happens, it won’t be pretty. But it has to happen, in order for the proper timeline to be restored. We just don’t want to be here when it does.”

There was a pause, and everyone was still. 

“Well, come on then!” urged the Doctor, motioning for them to enter the TARDIS. 

“What about me!?” cried the Watcher. Yaz’s stomach dropped; she’d nearly forgotten he was there at all. 

Something about the Doctor seemed to change as he looked at the man kneeling in the mud. 

“You three, go on inside,” the Doctor instructed in a tone that left no room for argument. “I’ll be in soon.” 

Graham gestured Ryan and Yaz on in, and quietly, they did what all the Doctor’s friends tended to do — as they were told.

“You can’t leave me here to die!” pleaded the Watcher. “I know I’ve done terrible things, but I—” 

“You took someone I love very much, Watcher, and you hurt her. You made her so, so sad,” the Doctor took a step closer to him. Gone was the light from his eyes, the boyish charm, the youthful cheer. In its place, there was rage. 

“And you destroyed a world!” cried the Watcher.

“I did what I had to do!” 

The Doctor hadn’t meant to scream it out — he’d actually meant to say it quite calmly. But calm was something he was objectively not; the power of the universe coursed through his veins, and in his blood was the raw, destructive force of the Time Lord race. He looked at the Watcher, and he saw himself. They were the same, really. Cut from the same fabric of eternity, molded by the same hands, born of the once-mighty Gallifreyan race.

“I’m sorry that I did it,” he paused to catch his breath. “I’m sorry that I hurt the people you cared for. But it had to be done to prevent a world like this one.” He gestured broadly to the reality breaking apart around them.

“You’re no better than me,” the Watcher spat at his shoes. “You and your high horse, Doctor. Your righteousness. You’re worse than that sodding girl you love so much.” 

“You’re right,” said the Doctor cooly, having finally found whatever staunch moral immobility he’d been searching for. With it came a painful realisation. “I am no better than you. And I am worse than River. Because at her core, River Song is good. At her core, River Song will fight tooth and nail for the people she loves, and no matter what, River Song will never, ever give up, and she’ll never, ever run away. But do you know what I am, at my core?” 

The Watcher looked up at him silently, with deep hatred. 

“I’m a murderer,” said the Doctor. “I’m a murderer who is always, always running. You’re right. I burned my homeworld, and I burned a million children, a million mothers, a million fathers,” he shut his eyes for a moment — just a moment — and he saw flames. Burning buildings. He heard the way screams began deep in the throats of terrified civilians, and then wavered as they were choked out by the billowing smoke. He’d done that. He’d stood in the wake of his own destruction, and he thought, ‘I did this,” and it had made him sick.

“I talk about the greater good, but you’re right; I am no better than you,” he continued. “In fact, I’m far worse. And you should be very afraid right now, because I’m the man that decides if you live or die.” 

“Just kill me,” the Watcher, though a fool he might’ve been, realised he’d been beat. But he still had one card up his sleeve. “But I want you to know something that River said to me. Or maybe she thought it. Her thoughts are so loud. I don’t know how you ever tune her out.” 

“What did she say to you?” the Doctor wasn’t sure he really wanted to know. 

“That she was saving the universe because it was the right thing to do. Because it’s what you would do,” he smiled at the way something seemed to quietly shatter deep inside the Doctor’s chest. “She wants to be like you. You’re her hero. And what would River say if her hero — the man who she’s made her model of goodness — ran away and let me die?” 

The Doctor grabbed the Watcher by the collar of his shirt and pulled him violently to his feet. There was a raw power in the way his eyes narrowed, in the tension of his neck, in the bulging, angry vein on his forehead. Something lived inside of the silly man with a bowtie — something that was capable of cruelty, of violence, of rage.

“You get a few things straight,” he snarled. “First of all — River understands better than anyone what I am. She’s the woman who knows. And I’m the man who runs.” He let go of him and turned on his heels, making his way toward the TARDIS. The sky was blacker than black, with a colourlessness caused only by the total absence of everything. The ground underfoot had dried out and cracked, little more than aged and hollow plaster, now. Flecks of dirt and rubble had begun to fall through the chasms spreading the earth and into the void beneath it, and as a particularly deep break opened up beneath the Watcher, the Doctor held his breath.

The Watcher’s eyes went wide, and for the first time it seemed to dawn on him: He was going to die. And the Doctor was going to let it happen.

“You’ve killed me,” he said, aghast.

“I’ve killed all the Time Lords,” the Doctor didn’t turn to face him. He couldn’t. “You’re nothing special.” 

And the Watcher fell. He might’ve screamed, but the Doctor wouldn’t have heard it over the sound of his hearts hammering away in his chest, the blood pulsing through his ears like a terrible drum. 

But by the time he crossed the threshold into the TARDIS, he’d regained his composure, fixed his bowtie once again, and put on his best smile. It was a mask, but he was the kind of man who wore many.

“We better be off!” he told the trio, who eyed him with mingled suspicion and relief. “This world is about to be swallowed up by the time beasts, and if we aren’t out of here soon, we’ll be eaten, too!”

“Time beasts!?” Ryan’s grasp tightened on the railing. “There’s no such thing, is there?” 

“No, definitely not. But maybe so,” he shut the door and rushed over to the console, pulling a series of levers and pressing buttons by the handful. “You lot better find something to hold onto!” 

Yaz wrapped her arms around the railing. “Why’s that?” 

“Because we’re about to pop a bubble universe, rescue a girl, and save the world! In that order!” He grinned. “And it’s going to get messy!” 

Graham felt a bit nauseous. “Now he’s starting to sound like our Doc.” 

“We’re going to find River?” Yaz deduced. “Where is she?” 

“At the edge of time,” said the Doctor. “A place where things go to be forgotten. But River has the habit of being unforgettable.” 

With a mighty groan, the TARDIS took flight. Into the vortex it went, just in time, too; what remained of the impossible world falling out from beneath their feet had crumbled like cosmic dust, and all that was with it — the ghostly facade of Dochas’ towne square, the smoldering remnants of Jack’s old house, and the ramshackle hut that Rory Williams had called home — had faded, too. And once all the people had gone — carried gingerly home or swallowed up like the Watcher had been — the world swelled and bulged, and finally, it popped.

And there was nothing left.


	17. Endings (Unchained Melody)

River ran faster than she’d ever run in her life, but it felt like she was barely moving. She’d had dreams like this before, only usually, it was someone like Kovarian or a band of renegade Silents on her tail. Not even her messy brain could’ve predicted she’d be running from nothing. Literally. The darkness encroached, nipping at her heels. She didn’t know what it would’ve meant to fall into it, but she really didn’t feel like finding out. 

There was a loud bang, like a mix of gunfire and the sound lightning makes when it hits a tree. It was so deafening it made her ears ring, but River couldn’t dwell on it for long.

The burn in her lungs was nearing unbearable, but she sucked in a sharp gulp of air and pushed herself further, harder, faster. Part of her wondered if there was even a point. She could be running forever. Except, that was the thing — she couldn’t run forever. No one could. The part of her that wanted to stop wondered if she was only prolonging the inevitable. But the other part of her was a fighter, and she’d never given up before, even when she desperately wanted to. And so she ran, through summer and winter and autumn and spring, and back again.

Until a loose lace on her shoe had tangled up with her feet, and she hit the ground hard, falling with a muddy splash into the rain. She turned, wide-eyed, to watch as an empty tidal wave of pure night came tumbling toward her. She couldn’t outrun it. She couldn’t think her way out of this situation. In fact, she was having a hard time thinking at all. The prolonged inevitable had come. She only hoped it wouldn’t hurt.

“Take my hand!” cried a familiar voice, and River scrambled to her feet. Hovering a few feet above her head was the TARDIS, and dangling out of it was Yasmin Khan. 

“Yaz!?” she gasped. “Doctor!?” 

“Come on!” urged Yaz, and River did as she was told. With the end of the world speeding toward her, she hardly had a choice.

Ryan grabbed her other arm and Graham helped her clamber into the ship. Once safely inside, the doors swung shut, and River leaned against the railing to catch her breath.

“Bloody hell!” she cursed, pressing a hand against the sharp pain in her side. “Now that’s what I call cardio!” 

The trio rushed to hug her, and after a stunned pause, she hugged them back.

“You’re brilliant!” praised Ryan. “You saved the world!” 

“It really worked?” River rolled up her sleeves, suddenly feeling quite warm.

“The bad reality is gone,” explained Yaz. “It fell apart!”

“Something about paradoxes,” Graham added. “I couldn’t really keep up.” 

Yaz, Ryan, and Graham stepped back as the Doctor approached from the console, satisfied with the course he’d punched in. There was a brief and poignant pause while he and River took each other in, as if they couldn’t quite believe they’d both made it out alive. And then as if a switch had been flipped, they rushed into each other's arms and held each other tight.

“You said you’d be right behind me,” the Doctor whispered into her hair, ducking his head against hers. 

“It was the only way I could get you to go,” she replied, pulling away just enough to cup his cheek. “You bad, bad boy. You punched a hole in the bubble universe.” She beamed. That must’ve been the loud bang she’d heard.

The Doctor chuckled tenderly and cupped her cheek. “And now I’m flying us into the void.” 

Well, that was one way to ruin the moment.

“What!?” 

“Are you mad!?” Graham barked. “We can’t survive that!” 

“The TARDIS can survive anything!” he gave the wall a fond pat. “I’ll have to modify her a bit, but it’s the only way we can restore ourselves to our proper times and places. Unless you all want to be timeless and placeless forever, I suggest you trust me!” 

Yaz looked nervously at River, who gave a firm nod. 

“Alright,” Yaz gulped. “We trust you, yeah?” She turned to her friends.

“Yeah,” Ryan agreed.

“I guess so,” huffed Graham. “We’ve made it this far in one piece.” 

“Right, then. Thank you,” the Doctor smiled at them all. “I can’t wait to meet you lot someday.” 

“We’ve already met you,” Ryan said, confused. “Just now, I mean. And your future self.” He paused. “I’m sorta lost.”

“Yes, but I won’t remember this. I mean, I will. But future me — your Doctor — she won’t. Because she can’t know you yet. Rather, I can’t. Pronouns are sort of hard for Time Lords.” He made a frustrated sound and gave his forehead a thump. “What I’m trying to say, is that she can’t remember that this happened, because she needs to meet you organically. And that hasn’t happened yet. When you come into her life, you have to be strangers to her. Or else things will be different, and the paradoxes! Oh it hurts my head just to think about it!”

“Spoilers,” River explained. “You can’t tell a story out of order, or it won’t make any sense.”

“Right!” cheered the Doctor. “Listen to River. Always listen to River. She’s quite quick.”

And with that, he slipped under the console and got to work.

“It was good knowing you,” River shook each of their hands. “The Doctor — your Doctor, I mean — chose her friends well.” 

Yaz gave her another hug. Tighter this time. “You’re like, the bravest woman I’ve ever met.”

“And you’re the second-bravest woman I’ve ever met,” River smiled. The first, of course, had been Amy Pond. She pulled her tube of hallucinogenic lipstick out of her pocket and pressed it into Yaz’s hand. “I want you to have this. You never know when you’ll need to kiss your enemies.” 

Yaz grinned and held onto it with pride. “I’ll treasure it. Thank you.”

“Take care of yourself, and of each other. And you,” she turned to Ryan, adjusting the folded collar on her shirt. “Don’t let the universe change you. If everyone carried Jammie Dodgers in their pockets, wars would be a lot less bloody.” 

“I don’t get a gift, too?” teased Ryan. 

“Here’s your present,” River grinned and gave him a hug. 

“It’s the best one I’ve ever gotten, I think,” he beamed. “And last Christmas, I got the new Xbox.” 

River laughed, but when she faced Graham, her smile strained a bit.

“I’m rubbish with goodbyes,” she admitted. “But I hope we’ll meet again someday.”

“I hope so, too,” Graham gave her hand an affectionate squeeze. “But until then, good luck.” 

“And godspeed,” River tacked on.

“Ready!?” called the Doctor. 

“As ready as we’ll ever be!” River held onto the railing. 

“In that case, prepare for something to probably happen in three…” 

River wished he would’ve been more specific.

“Two.” 

But then again, she rather liked a good mystery. 

“One!” 

***

River sat up so quickly she smacked her head off of the low ceiling, cursing as she rubbed at the sore spot. Familiar sounds and smells and textured assailed her senses — the blaring of distant sirens, the bark of prison guards, the stench of forming mildew, the itch of scratchy clothes…

Stormcage!

River had never been so delighted to see the damned old place. 

She scrambled out of bed and rushed over to the cracked mirror in the corner of her cell. She inspected her own face — unbruised, unbloodied. Her hair fell in tangled curls just passed her shoulders. There was no evidence that the invasion of the Daleks had ever happened. Had they done it? Or had it all been a strange and terrible dream? 

No, it had been real. As much as she sort of wished it wasn’t, she knew that it had been. It was the Pandorica all over again; a world that might as well have happened in her head. 

Another familiar sound made her heart skip a beat — the _vworp_ of a TARDIS with its brakes left on.

She rushed to the front of her cell and pressed herself against the bars, watching with delight as the TARDIS materialised in the middle of the corridor. No guards ever seemed to be around to see it; they all thought she was mad. But she sort of liked it that way.

“Doctor!” she beamed. “Did we do it?” 

“Do what?” grinned the Doctor. “Destroy the world that never was and save the world that always is?” 

River cocked her head to the side. “Now, darling, you make it sound complicated.”

He snorted out a laugh and pointed his sonic at her cell door. It swiftly unlocked, and River slipped out into the hall.

“What about the Watcher?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” admitted the Doctor. “He fell through a crack in the ending realty, just like we did. He thought he was going to die, but I knew he wouldn’t. I’d assume he just...went back to wherever he was before. Woke up in bed, maybe.” 

“Or, if we’re lucky, behind the wheel of a truck headed straight for a tree,” River frowned. “He’s still out there. He could do it all again. I knew I should’ve killed him when I had a Colt-45 pointed at his head.”

The Doctor shook his head. “You chose mercy, River.” 

“He didn't deserve it.” 

“No, he didn’t,” the Doctor took her hand. “And that makes it all the more remarkable.”

River’s cheeks flushed with a sudden blush, and she stared bashfully at her shoes. She’d spared the two boy guards at the City Centre, and they’d betrayed her. But maybe that was their fault. Maybe she’d still done the right thing. Maybe she’d defied the universe’s own expectations of her. She was born to kill, but on that special, special day, she’d put the gun down. 

Strangely, she felt almost...proud of herself. That certainly was new. 

“I still think he’ll come back,” she sighed. “And I don’t think I’d make the same decision, if I had to do it again.” 

“I don’t think he will,” the Doctor assured her. “If there’s one thing Time Lords hate more than being wrong, it’s losing.” He knew better than anyone that those weren’t always the same thing. “And I think the Watcher knows better than to try to win against you again.” 

“Against us,” River corrected, lacing their fingers together.

“Against us,” repeated the Doctor. “So what do you say?” He guided her toward the TARDIS. “Where do you want to go to celebrate? New Year’s Day 2000 — it’s the turn of the millennium, and I know my girl loves a party. Or maybe New Year’s Day 3000 — aside from the killer turtles, that’s a good night, too. Or—” 

“Actually, Doctor,” River cut him off. “I had someplace else in mind.” 

***

Rory Williams was tending to his garden with a gentle but firm hand — there’d been a problem with insects chomping on his tomato leaves. He hated to kill the little things; they didn’t know that they were pests. But nonetheless, they were. And he needed the tomatoes if he was going to hand-make a special anniversary dinner for Amy next month. He readied the bottle of insect repellent he’d bought at Tesco with a sigh. 

“Well, I hate to have to do this,” he said to the garden; the hidden creatures had no way of knowing what would happen next. “But I suppose Amy’s worth killing for.”

He was just about to spray the leaves when he heard the TARDIS materialising — right over the bed of petunias he’d replanted three times, all in different locations, all for the very same reason. 

It was difficult to stay angry for long, though. Flowers could be replaced. Family couldn’t.

“I told you to land behind the shed!” River was lecturing the Doctor as the doors opened up. 

“I landed behind the shed last time and crushed the flowers!” 

“Yes, but they’ve moved them!” River gave his arm a playful punch. “You should’ve just let me drive!”

Rory chuckled at the way they bickered; he’d say it was like an old married couple, but that might’ve been too on-the-nose. 

The teasing grin slipped from River’s lips when she noticed him standing there. A moment passed in profound silence, and before Rory could ask her what was wrong, she enveloped him in a bone-crushing hug. 

“River?” Rory gave her a squeeze, and then with a hand on either of her shoulders, he took a good, long look at her. Her eyes were damp, which was never a good sign, but she was smiling, which almost always was. No bruises. No cuts. No scrapes. She seemed okay. But she seemed different. Affected. He felt like he understood her in a way he didn’t really understand anyone else; she was a lot like her mum, with the blood of a fiery Scot who’d punch out a stranger for looking at her the wrong way. But she was a lot like him, too, in the way that they both seemed to feel the world’s aches and pains, shoulder burdens that weren’t their own, and run into trouble even when they weren’t out looking.

“Are you alright?” he asked her, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I’m more than alright,” she wiped her eyes with a laugh. “Oh, I’ve never been better!” 

She looked him over, too, and it was quite obvious he had no recollection of the world that had ended. She reckoned that was a good thing. 

“You better not’ve landed on my petunias again, Doctor!” cried a fast-approaching voice. The French doors slid open, and Amy Pond stalked into the backyard in slippers and a loud green apron. She pointed at the crushed plants with an indignant huff. “I swear you do that on purpose!” 

“Mum!” River cried, rushing to hug her tight. Amy hugged her, too, and over her shoulder, she gave Rory a strange look. He shrugged. 

Amy felt River’s forehead for a fever that wasn’t there, prodded at her arms for wounds, looked into her eyes for a pain that went beyond cuts of broken bones. Her anxiety was more than just a mother’s worry; River saw it on her face that she knew, that she remembered the world River had come from. Amy always remembered. She’d grown up with a crack in her wall, with the static white noise of the universe seeping into her dreams. 

It was burden, River thought, but a blessing, too. They’d have their discussion later. River made a mental note to send the Doctor out for wine.

“My brave girl,” Amy hugged her. “You’re home, now.” 

Rory wrapped his arms protectively around the pair of them.

“What’s gotten into you, Melody?”

“Nothing’s gotten into me at all,” River sniffed, regaining what composure had started to slip and flashing her best smile. “I just missed you two. That’s all.” 

She’d just come for supper a few days back, but Rory was hardly about to complain. He lived for the days she came by, for the times they were together as a family, for the rare moments in which his steadfast and strong-willed daughter was willing to let him dote. 

“We missed you, too,” he said, and he meant it.

“Stay for dinner. I’m making a brisket,” Amy declared with pride.

“You’re cooking!?” piqued the Doctor. “Should I pop out and get takeaway as a backup?” 

“Oi!” Amy scolded. “You’re still on thin ice for crushing my flowers, Spaceboy.” 

“I’d behave, if I were you,” Rory gave the Doctor a knowing look, and they both laughed.

“I’ll help you, Mum,” River offered cheerily.

“Oh, now we’re really in trouble,” the Doctor feigned unease. “River’s the only person I’ve ever known to burn hard boiled eggs.” 

“They’re clever girls,” Rory reminded. “I think the pair of them can figure it out.” 

The Doctor gave him a confused look, and Rory grinned.

“Also, I’ve scheduled for a pizza to be delivered at seven. Just in case.” 

“Smart man!” The Doctor clapped him on the shoulder. 

As they made their way inside, a faint wind blew. It was the kind of summer wind that smelled like honeysuckle and sunscreen, that soothed the savage soul and gave the illusion that at least for now, everything was going to be just fine.

***

“I think it’s a brilliant idea!” The Doctor leapt to her feet, pulling a grinning Yaz up with her. “I haven’t been to Swansea in ages! It’s lovely in August.” 

Yaz, Ryan, and Graham all shared a stunned look. 

It was like nothing had happened. Like they’d blinked, and they were right back at the start. In their Doctor’s TARDIS, watching the petite blonde flit around with a cheese toasty in one hand and a magic screwdriver in the other. And she didn’t seem to remember it at all. Which Yaz decided didn’t make sense. The mysterious man they’d met had been her former self, and so it only followed that his memories ought to be her memories. But Yaz remembered what he’d said about remembering, and she reckoned she ought not think about it too hard. She chalked it up to weird alien magic, and she moved on.

“Wales!” The Doctor went on, seeming chuffed. “I reckon we ought to ask Graham for ideas more often! I—” 

She was cut off by a trio of frantic embraces, arms pulling her closer and mouths declaring things that all overlapped and ran together. She wasn’t big on hugs, really, but she was big on her fam, and so she gave their backs and heads awkward pats and smiled wide when she remembered how.

“You lot must really, really like the beach!” 

***

Graham stared into the ocean. He stood alone on the shore, and the sun was about to set. It was really quite picturesque, the way it reflected into the sea, and the way the sea ebbed and flowed like some sort of heartbeat. Gulls dove in and out of the water in search of tiny fish, and cawed out to their mates when they hit the jackpot. 

By day, the beach was filled with youngsters tossing disks and swimming circles around each other, cracking open cold beers and biting into warm hot dogs. By night, it was a scene made for young lovers. Towels on the sand, kisses on cheeks, watching the sun set until finally, nighttime came. It was a place made for the living, for the young, for the intrepid. With his face cast in an orange glow, Graham realised he’d grown out of his own memory of the place. How strange it was. How strange, indeed.

He’d wanted to come here for closure, because as a young man, he’d lost something to the ocean — his innocence. It had drowned with Harry Galligher, choked on the brine, and washed up on a shore somewhere far, far away. He wondered where lost things went. He wondered about Grace, the woman who had nursed him back to health, who had married him, who had loved him. And he wondered about Grace, the woman out of time, the American doctor, who he’d been foolish enough to sort of start to love.

No, he thought. He wasn’t foolish. Love was never foolish. 

But most of all, he wondered about Harry. 

He felt motion beside him, and turned to see Yaz standing there with a towel around her shoulders.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.” 

“I wanted to check on you,” she nudged him. “You’ve been standing here alone awhile. Ryan and the Doctor are playing beach games with a couple of university kids.” 

Graham turned to look, and he chuckled. They’d made a pact not to tell the Doctor about what had happened. Somehow, it seemed better that she didn’t know. 

“I’m alright, Yaz. Don’t worry about me,” he assured her. “I’m just an old man thinking.” 

“You aren’t old,” Yaz rolled her eyes. “But what are you thinking about?” 

“My old friend, Harry,” he admitted. “I always thought about how different things would be if he was alive. I’d always...this sounds silly, but I’d make up stories in my head about the adventures we’d have. The places we’d go. The things we’d see.” 

“And you never expected to see him used by the Daleks,” Yaz frowned. “I’m sure that was hard for you.” 

“Yeah,” Graham paused. “But it also taught me a lesson about letting the dead rest. The man the Daleks resurrected wasn’t really him. And the man that I’ve resurrected in my head a thousand times over? That isn’t him, either.”

Yaz listened thoughtfully, carefully, attentively. “And you’re alright with that?” 

“You know, I think I am,” Graham smiled at her. “They say that when you love someone, they’re never really gone. But people do sometimes go away. So what are we left with?” Graham picked up a seashell he noticed sticking up out of the sand. It was cracked and fragile around the edges, but it was the kind of thing his Grace would’ve loved. “We’re left with memories. And those memories are sacred things that no one can ever defile or take away.” 

Yaz took his hand and smiled. “I think you’re right.” 

“Graham! Yaz!” called the Doctor, bouncing with untapped energy. “We’re going to play volleyball! We need you on our team!” 

Graham and Yaz shared a fond look and a nod. 

“We’ll be right there!” Yaz replied. 

“Duty calls,” chuckled Graham. “Never a dull day with the Doctor.” 

“Sometimes you’re fighting Daleks in a crumbling reality, and sometimes you’re fighting university students on the beach.” 

“The stakes have never been higher!”

Graham watched as a gaggle of young men smacked a volleyball around and cheered at each other’s silly tricks. It reminded him of a distant memory, of a long-lost group of friends who played ball at Rhossili Bay in August of 1979. He thought that maybe that night, he’d dig out his old computer and look up Johnny and George on BookFace, or whatever it was kids used these days.

A reunion was long overdue.

***   
Rose Tyler awoke in her room to the sun streaming in through an open window, and her mother outside her door shouting something about the shops. 

Ianto Jones didn’t wake up at all.

Grace Holloway had a 12-hour shift at the hospital; maybe if she got lucky, she’d save a life or two. After all, they called her Amazing Grace for a very good reason.

Donna Noble had errands to run.

Clara Oswald had a lesson plan to make. 

Jack Harkness marched into the headquarters of the Torchwood Institute as if nothing had happened at all. 

Across all of time and space, they were strangers once more, but they shared something uncanny and special: a memory of an adventure that never was. It might as well have been a dream. But they knew, too, that if someone tries hard enough to cling to the memory of a dream, they might just find that it had been real all along. 

And, despite how strange and sad it felt, life was unfolding as it meant to, and that was worth a thousand dreams.

River was thinking about them as she examined her father’s garden, cross-legged on the grass, her journal open in her lap. As predicted, the brisket had burned, and not five minutes later, a pizza had arrived and saved the day. No matter the universe, Rory always seemed to be saving someone from something. She smiled fondly at the thought.

_Dear Diary,_ she wrote. _I’ve got quite the story for you._

_It’s a long one. And a sad one. It’s about a lot of things — fear, courage, sacrifice, loss — but at its core, it’s about love. At its core, isn’t everything?_

_In Plato’s Symposium, Aristophanes wrote that each person was once twice what they are now: two heads, four arms, four legs, one soul. These were powerful beings, descendants of the cosmos themselves, but their boldness angered the gods. And so Apollo did the unthinkable — he cut each soul in two and scattered them among the stars, condemning every poor sod to a lifetime of searching for the thing that completes them. For their other half._

_He wrote that love is the name we give to our desire and pursuit of wholeness. And in a way, I think he’s right. But in a way, I know he’s wrong. You see, Diary, love is a lot of things. But at the end of the day, it isn’t anyone or anything else that makes us whole._

_We’re each like a snowball traveling downhill, getting bigger and bigger as it picks up new snow. Our love adds to us. Our experiences make us bigger, even if they sometimes make us feel small. But we were born complete. I took the long way around realising that. But as my mum says, better late than never._

The Doctor snuck up behind her and touched the cold waterbottle he was carrying to the back of her neck. She yelped and turned around, ready for a fight, but when she saw him laughing, she couldn’t help but smile, too.

“I hate you,” she teased.

“No you don’t,” the Doctor took a seat beside her, and she laid down with her head in his lap. 

Amy had strung up fairy lights along the fence, and they glowed delicately; the back garden felt like a mystical place. A peaceful place. River reckoned she wouldn’t mind staying a few nights.

“How are you?” the Doctor ran his fingers through her hair. He’d rather liked it short — and in truth, River had, too. But with things restored to normal, she was content to brush tangles out of her face and snap the teeth of combs. Normalcy. As droll as it was, she realised that she craved it. She always had.

“I’m good,” she looked up at him and smiled. “Really, I am.”

“You’ve been through a lot in that other world.” 

“But I’m here now,” she took his hand. “With you.” 

“About what I said in Stormcage before all this,” the Doctor cleared his throat. “About blaming you—” 

“I know, I know,” River gave a dismissive wave. “You were only saying that so I wouldn’t follow after you.”

“That doesn’t make it right,” he shrugged. “And you followed me anyway.”

River gave him a flirtatious grin. “I’d follow you to the ends of time itself,” she paused. “In fact, I think I have done.” 

The Doctor laughed and gave her nose a tap. “You, my love, are mad.” 

“I’d have to be, to marry you,” she teased. “Tell me, Doctor. Do you remember what happened between you and the Watcher? How he sent you away?” 

The Doctor shook his head. “I don’t.” 

“Is that strange?” 

“It’s no more strange than anything else that’s happened,” he took a sip of the water and sighed. “I put a neural block on myself. A few regenerations from now, I won’t even remember anything from that world at all. Spoilers, and all that. And you know what else,” the Doctor cocked his head to the side, as if he’d just realised something new. “I didn’t think I had any regenerations left after this body.” 

“You’ve got a future after all,” River smiled. The Doctor did, too.

“I suppose I do. Thanks to you.” 

“I just did what you do,” River shrugged. “Channeled my inner Doctor.” 

“No,” the Doctor said, stern enough to earn a strange look. “You did what you do, River. All on your own. All those hard decisions you made, all those brave choices and terrifying jumps...that’s you. Don’t discredit yourself. And,” he sighed. “Don’t mistake me for a hero.” 

“I know you better than that,” River told him. “But I know you well enough to love you anyway.”

The Doctor smiled, touched. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her lips. 

“And besides,” she went on. “Heroes aren’t gods, and gods aren’t necessarily kind. But ‘hero’ is what we call someone who’s desperate, who’s afraid, and who’s willing to risk their life to change that. There’s something inexplicably and undeniably human about every hero. It isn’t about morals, Doctor. It’s about rage, and fear, and love, and hope.” She cupped his cheek. “And ‘villain’ is what we call a hero who fails.” 

She thought of the Watcher, who in his own narrative, was fighting the man that ended his world. The Watcher’s first mistake was believing in a false equivalence between his suffering and the plight of the universe; he had once been in love — but he got so angry he forgot what it felt like to have hope. That was his second mistake, and, River figured, his most lethal.

She almost felt bad for him, because in a way, he was right; they weren’t so different. 

“But everyone fails sometimes,” she continued. “I failed a lot in that world — I was too proud and too angry to turn back, and my father paid the price for my mistakes,” she glanced into the house through the distant kitchen window, where Rory was diligently doing the dishes. “I failed in controlling my telepathy, and the whole universe almost burned because of it. But you still think I’m brave.” 

The Doctor nodded. “I know that you are.”

“So what’s the difference, then, between a hero and a villian?” River sat up, and the Doctor couldn’t help but think she looked beautiful in the glow of Amy’s fairy lights, hair wild and clothes wrinkled, eyes alight with a professor’s enthusiasm.

“What’s the difference?” he asked with a loving smile, eager to know where this lecture was going.

“Absolutely nothing,” she shrugged. “Because we all fill the role of both, depending on who you ask, depending on when and where we are. And so you can fancy yourself a villain all you’d like, Doctor, but history might think otherwise,” she gave his cheek a playful pat. “And you’ll just have to deal with that, now won’t you?” 

He grinned and went in for a kiss, his hand settling into the small of her back. She pulled him down on top of her with a laugh, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him there in the moonlit garden. 

It was the perfect moment — until the sprinklers came on, and they hopped to their feet with a startled squeal.

“Sorry!” called Rory from the shed, with a certain humour that led River to believe he wasn’t sorry at all. 

“He did that on purpose,” the Doctor accused.

“Yeah,” River laughed. “He definitely did.” 

“Can’t say I blame him,” the Doctor put his arms around her waist once again, tilting his forehead against hers. The sprinklers cast a rainbow over the garden, and standing in its arch, she kissed him again — and there was absolutely nothing Rory could do about it.

“Wait,” said the Doctor, with that impish look he always got on his face when he had an idea. He pulled out his sonic, jabbing it into the dampened dirt. It started to play music — something slow and simple and sweet. He held out his hand.

“What are you doing?” River looked at him with mingled amusement and rare shyness.

“I’m asking you to dance with me, River Song,” he beamed. “I’ll probably step on your feet more than once, fair warning, but to make it fair, you can step on mine, too.”

She laughed. “You’re a real romantic, Doctor.” 

He couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or not, but she was smiling, so he figured it didn’t really matter.

There were moments when River felt like the universe’s petty plaything, like a forgotten plotpoint in a cosmic dream. There were moments when her heart beat heavy with the defiance of destiny and fate, when the world made her knees buckle beneath its burden.

But they were also times when things felt so wonderful, so simple, so normal to the point of cliche, when she was just a girl kissing a boy in her father’s garden. She loved the moments like those. They made her feel real. 

She took his hands, holding onto one and placing the other on her hip. 

And the music played. 

And they danced.

_Oh, my love, my darling  
I've hungered for your touch  
A long, lonely time.  
Time goes by so slowly,  
And time can do so much.  
Are you still mine?  
I need your love.  
I need your love.  
God speed your love to me._

_Lonely rivers flow  
To the sea, to the sea  
To the open arms of the sea.  
Lonely rivers sigh  
"Wait for me, wait for me,"  
I'll be coming home, wait for me._

_Oh, my love, my darling  
I've hungered, for your touch  
A long, lonely time.  
Time goes by so slowly,  
And time can do so much  
Are you still mine?  
I need your love.  
I need your love.  
God speed your love to me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe this is the last chapter of this series!!! When I started TAORS in December, I had no idea what the following year would bring — rapid change, insurmountable loss — and yet through it all, there was a small solace in fiction. And a silver lining because of it all. (I made a friend on ao3 and last week we met in real life lmao...isn't that crazy??) 
> 
> It was a great comfort for me to write this, and a great honour to write it for you all <3\. I can't thank you guys enough for all the comments and kudos! I've got more River-centric stories in the works, and even though life is back to a hustle and bustle, I hope to post them pretty soon!!
> 
> To quote Clara Oswald, "thank you for making me feel special." 
> 
> Much love!!


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